Once we knew where the third church would be situated, the next question to be answered was, what would our new church look like? The Archdiocese required that all new churches have the ability to seat at least 800 people with the ability to expand to 1000, and the growth in Frederick County suggested that this was a prudent size. Insurance proceeds from the burned church provided $3.6 million of the total cost, which was estimated to be $9.5 million (that figure increased to $11 million). A church of the size being contemplated would therefore require a capital campaign and a residual mortgage. Early in the process, Fr. Dietzenbach, the Parish Council and Parish staff took a bus tour of recently constructed churches in the Archdiocese – St. Ignatius (Hickory), St. John’s (Westminster), Sacred Heart (Glyndon), and St. John Neuman (Annapolis) to see potential blueprints for our new building. The overwhelming consensus was that St. Ignatius (Hickory) was the church we wanted to be.

After fire destroyed St. Peter’s Second Church and the immediate needs of where to celebrate liturgical events had been arranged (including where to house our pastor!), all thoughts turned to rebuilding. But that term – rebuilding - meant different things to parishioners. The Parish had been growing and for about 10 years, Masses were being said simultaneously in the Church and the Parish Center to accommodate everyone. Shortly before the fire, the Parish planning committee asked Fr. John Dietzenbach for permission to start looking for another site to build a larger church,  possibly on campus, but probably on new land. After the fire, the subject of where to build suddenly became an immediate need. Some parishioners understandably wanted to have a replica of the beloved second church re-built; but since the Parish was growing – we needed a larger church. Prior to June 3rd, the planning committee had looked to potentially build a larger church on adjoining farm land. In connectio

The Reverend Monsignor Don Luigi Sartori was born in 1843 in the Tyrol region of Italy. His was possibly the shortest pastorate at St. Peter’s in Libertytown, but that is not to say that there was not something dramatic about his overall priestly career. To begin with, he was a cousin of Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarro, more commonly known today as Saint Pope Pius X (1903-1914). He emigrated to the U. S. and entered the seminary. He was ordained a priest in 1875 in Wheeling, West Virginia. He was attached to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and was assigned to a two-parish circuit in western Maryland, St. Patrick’s in Cumberland and St. Patrick’s at Fifteen Mile Creek in Allegany County, in 1879. After this short assignment, he was assigned to another two-parish circuit which he led for many years, St. Francis de Sales in Abingdon and St. Stephen’s in Kingsville/Upper Falls/Bradshaw (1880-97). This was the longest pastorate in the first 100 years of St. Stephens. The 1880 US Census shows h

“Your church is on fire.” This is not the account of our parish staff learning of the terrible June 3, 2004 blaze that destroyed our second St. Peter’s church. Those same words were spoken that morning in the rectory kitchen at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Essex by pastor Monsignor Robert Hartnett to associate pastor Fr. Jason Worley who had walked in. Msgr. Hartnett had just heard on Baltimore radio about the Libertytown fire and knew that Fr. Jason was to transfer here in a few weeks. Those plans would change. Jason Worley was born April 24, 1966 in Baltimore, the seventh of the eight children of Herbert and Margaret Worley. He started school at Woodhome Elementary, but his parents wanted their children to experience a Catholic education, so he transferred to his parish school at St. Michael the Archangel in Overlea. He would later graduate from Towson Catholic High School. While a teenager, he was very active in his parish, serving St. Michael’s as a sacristan, a cantor, in th