St. Anthony of Padua

St. Anthony of Padua Parish was the Diocese of Rochester's first Italian national parish, established in 1906 to serve the growing Italian immigrant community. The parish grew from the migration of Italians to Rochester beginning in the 1880s. An Italian congregation was officially formed in 1898 by Father J. Emil Gefell, who had studied in Rome, with parishioners initially meeting in Our Lady's Chapel in the former St. Patrick Cathedral.

St. Anthony of Padua parish and school opened in 1906 in the former city School No. 6 on Lyell and North Plymouth Avenues. The parish school moved to a new building on Costar Street in 1956, and in 1965 the parish relocated from Lyell Avenue to a new church building on Lorimer Street, overlooking Jones Square in the Edgerton neighborhood.

Since the mid-1970s, St. Anthony also served as home to the Vietnamese Catholic Community, which later moved to St. Helen Parish in Gates. After 101 years of continuous service to Rochester's Italian-American and broader Catholic community, St. Anthony of Padua Parish closed on June 30, 2007. Church bells tolled "Ave Maria" at the beginning of the final Mass, marking the end of an era for the diocese's pioneering Italian parish.