Picture History of St. Kilian Parish
It all started when…
In July 1970, a small group of Catholics gathered in a home to celebrate Mass led by then Father Michael Hughes. After a very short time, the group grew and Mass was then celebrated at either O’Neill Elementary School or Mission Viejo High School multi-purpose rooms. At the same time, property was purchased by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles off of Estanciero Drive in Mission Viejo and some basic construction began.
In October 1972, our original church was dedicated by Bishop Timothy Manning. Shortly thereafter, the Parish Center was built to house both the priests’ rectory and the parish offices.
The original Parish Hall was built in 1981. Fr. Hughes was named Monsignor in 1985 and he remained pastor until 1990 when he retired. Fr. Jim Dunning was named our new pastor on July 1, 1990. Over his time here, our parish continued to grow and we were quickly running out of space. In April of 2000, we officially began our Capital Campaign for new construction and building expansion. However, before we could start on any buildings, it was necessary to secure additional land and construct an access road - which eventually became our lower parking lot.
In 2007, we began construction on the expansion of our new Parish Center - we expanded the Hall and added all the parish offices and a second floor, bringing us a dozen new classrooms and a large space for youth ministry. Soon after this, Fr. Jim retired as pastor in 2010.
Fr. Bruce Patterson became our pastor in 2010 and continued on with our construction plan. Finally, in 2012 we broke ground on our new church. On August 24, 2013, its dedication was celebrated by Bishop Kevin Vann. Many attended, and finally our sanctuary as we had envisioned was real.
Fr. Patrick Rudolph became our pastor in 2016, but was soon promoted to the position of Vicar to Priests in 2017.
Fr. Angelos Sebastian was then assigned to St. Kilian as Parish Administrator, and in 2019 was installed as our current pastor.