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St. Peter is located forty-five miles northeast of
Pueblo, in Ordway. It serves the surrounding towns of Olney Springs, Crowley,
and Sugar City. There is much farming and ranching in the area. Two nearby
prisons employ a significant number of residents. The county has a mostly
low-to-middle income range, and has a large elderly population. St. Peter is a
parish without a resident priest.
There were just a handful of Catholic families
in Ordway in 1906, and they had very little money. They were still determined to
build a parish house, with the hope that they would be assigned a resident
priest. The structure was located on 6th and Arkansas Streets, and
had two rooms set aside to function as a church. Fr. Michael Rank, a Benedictine
priest who resided in Rocky Ford, became St. Peter’s first pastor. He
celebrated the first mass in the building on May 28, 1906. The next year,
construction began on a separate church building; it was completed in 1908. That
church served the Crowley County community for several decades, until a new
church and rectory were built in 1967-68.
The parish has grown from one with a handful of
Catholic families to one with 150 plus families. Ironically, it no longer has a
priest residing in its rectory, instead, St. Peter in Ordway, and St. Peter in
Rocky Ford are served by the same priest who lives at the latter parish.
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