St. Mary Immaculate Catholic Church

Catholic worship in the Elora area began with Jesuit missionaries walking from Guelph, and the parish’s own history records a church built in 1840 at Thorpville, halfway between Guelph and Elora, followed in 1860 by a church on the south side of the Grand River at the eastern end of McNab Street. The cornerstone of the present church on Geddes Street was laid in late May 1870 by Rev. E. J. Gordon, Vicar General of Hamilton, and the English Gothic building, with a spire designed to rise 134 feet, was completed in late 1871. It is the second oldest of Elora’s major church buildings; only the Methodist (now United) church of 1862–63 is older. Construction was paid for through donations, bazaars, raffles and lectures, with a local Lutheran brickyard owner donating ten thousand bricks.

The church was renovated in 1921 (sacristy and stained-glass windows), 1947, and 1975 (to meet the requirements of Vatican II), and in the 2000s the brickwork, roof and windows were restored over two years. Fr. Hayden Starczala, ordained in 2020, is the twentieth priest to serve the parish, which was twinned with St. Martin of Tours, Drayton, in 2016 and shares its Sunday schedule with that parish. St. Mary’s School is associated with the parish.

What Catholics believe and how they worship