St. Alban Roe couple completes goal of attending Mass at every parish in the archdiocese

After four years, thousands of road miles and more than a few chicken and sausage dinners, Eric and Donna Ripp checked the final church, no. 188, off their spreadsheet.

The Ripps’ mission to attend Mass at every parish in the Archdiocese of St. Louis began after churches reopened from the COVID-19 pandemic closure in May 2020. Their home parish, St. Alban Roe in Wildwood, temporarily was holding Mass in the gym to allow for more space between worshipers. The couple couldn’t shake the feeling of being at their sons’ grade school basketball games, so they decided to use it as an opportunity to visit other churches.

First, they went to Mass at Ascension in Chesterfield; the following week, St. Clare of Assisi in Ellisville.

“And then all of a sudden, (Eric) gets this wild idea to download a spreadsheet of all the churches in the archdiocese. And we’re like, ‘OK, let’s just see how many we can go to,’” Donna said. “It got to be a mission — our own little mission from God.”

Each week, the couple sat down with the spreadsheet, picked a church and planned their Sunday. St. Alban Roe is five minutes down the road from their home; the farthest parish for them, St. Joseph in Apple Creek, was an hour-and-45-minute drive.

The Ripps experienced God in new ways first through the beauty they saw in the churches themselves, Eric said. They’d attended Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis before, but other favorites were the Shrine of St. Joseph in Downtown St. Louis; St. Anthony of Padua, St. Cecilia and the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales in south St. Louis; and Ste. Genevieve in Ste. Genevieve.

But over the course of the four years, they were most impressed by the hospitality of the people they met along the way, Donna said. Especially in small congregations — where newcomers are more noticeable — parishioners would greet them, ask where they were from and welcome them to the parish.

In turn, the Ripps made it a point to spend time at the parish or the surrounding community to get to know the people. Rather than checking off churches alphabetically, or tackling the list by region, “We would read the (St. Louis) Review, and we would look at the sausage dinners or chicken dinners or pancake breakfasts, and we would try to hit those churches,” Donna said.

(It’s hard to choose favorites from the array of delicious food they ate, but the chicken dinner at St. John the Baptist “Gildehaus” in Villa Ridge and the sausage dinner at St. Alphonsus in Millwood were standouts, the couple agreed.)

At St. Stephen in Richwoods, they happened to attend on the day of the parish children’s first holy Communion. As they were walking out, parishioners invited them to the celebratory reception afterward. The Ripps told them they weren’t parishioners, but “they said, ‘We really do want you to come — everybody’s invited,’” Donna said.

The mission gave them a chance to experience Mass in other languages, too, including Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Korean, Latin and Ukrainian. After attending Mass at St. Andrew Kim in Chesterfield, a Korean personal parish, parishioners insisted they join them for lunch in the parish hall afterward.

“The food was fabulous. I had never had Korean food, and it was so good — it was a spread like you wouldn’t believe,” Donna said. “We ended up having the best time. The people were so nice, we just sat there and we made all these new friends.”

The Ripps got to know many priests along the way, often seeing priests at more than one parish over the course of the four years as they were reassigned or took on additional parishes. They met Father Anthony Dattilo after Mass at St. Joachim in Old Mines, got to talking and took him out for dinner, bonding over their shared Italian heritage.

A couple of weeks later, they attended Mass with Father Dattilo at St. Joseph in Tiff, and they brought along homemade Italian Christmas cookies.

He said, “‘My mom used to make these!’ He was so excited,” Donna said.

After the All Things New parish reorganization announcement on Pentecost 2023, Eric cross-checked the list of parishes that would be subsumed with their spreadsheet of remaining churches. The Ripps had 13 of those parishes left and nine weeks until the decrees went into effect Aug. 1, “so we doubled up and went to one Saturday night and one Sunday,” Eric said.

At each church, they took a photo of the altar and the cornerstone, which ended up being a conversation starter — when the cornerstone was difficult to find, parishioners often joined them to search for it. The couple later turned their photo collection into a printed book, showcasing the 188 churches alphabetically. They also saved the bulletins from each church and keep them in four file folders, organized chronologically by the date of their visit.

As they flipped through the photo book on their dining room table, the couple recalled moments of God’s presence in each church: the Gospel music that invigorated them at St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church in St. Louis, the Christmas they returned to St. Bridget of Kildare in Pacific because they had a good conversation with Father Andrew Burkemper, and the awe of learning about the miracles that took place in the Shrine of St. Joseph.

Breaking out of their normal routine for four years gave the Ripps a “new appreciation of the Catholic faith and all the different churches that are out there,” Eric said.

These days, the Ripps are enjoying their renewed routine of 9:30 a.m. Mass at St. Alban Roe, in the familiar church with the parishioners they’ve worshiped alongside since 1998. But now, they carry with them a widened experience of the body of Christ. And, when they get the itch to spend a Sunday elsewhere — they’ve got some pretty good ideas.

“There’s so many good people out there,” Donna said. “It’s amazing how many good people there are.”