Dear Website Visitors,

As pastor of St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in historic Abbeville, I welcome you to our website. I invite you to take the opportunity to browse around where you will get a wonderful introduction into our vast parish life. Our staff and many volunteers are the keys to the vibrant life of our parish. I am proud to have the privilege of serving the people of St. Mary Magdalen Parish and shepherding them in their spiritual journey. Our parishioners are devout and generously share their time, talent and treasure to make St. Mary Magdalen one of the jewels of the Diocese of Lafayette. I provide for you a small overview of what is happening in our parish and invite you to spend some time perusing our website to learn more. I also encourage our parishioners to frequently check the calendar for current events.

The spiritual life of our parish centers on opportunities for daily Mass Mondays through Saturdays, weekend Masses with an outstanding sacred choral music program, weekly rosary devotion by the Men of Mary and first Friday Eucharistic adoration. Our Christian Service Center serves the needs of the poor with hot meals at the soup kitchen, a food pantry where clients can choose their grocery items and a chapel for prayer and evangelization. In the area of Christian Formation, we provide a summer catechetical program and our youth group utilizes the Come, Lord Jesus program. Our sacramental preparation program for marriage affords engaged couples a personalized marriage preparation program utilizing extensively trained mentor couples. Parents are invited to be more engaged in the life of their children’s sacramental journey as instructional seminars are offered for parents of children receiving Baptism, First Penance, First Eucharist and Confirmation. Our parish owns and operates Vermilion Catholic High School providing an opportunity for an excellent Catholic education to high school students in this area. I invite you to utilize the link contained in this website to Vermilion Catholic High School’s website to see where children “Enter to Learn Christ” and “Leave to Serve Christ”.

We have recently worked hard to refurbish and maintain the buildings of our parish. Our Capital Campaign, “Preserving our Tradition as Faithful Stewards of Tomorrow”, has provided the funds to do major projects including waterproofing the church, replacing the roof and air conditioning at Vermilion Catholic, replacing the roof of our church and a complete restoration of the interior of our historic church. If you click on the “Historic Church Restoration” button you can see the pictures of our progress and get full information about the projects that have been completed in both Phases of our campaign. We are all looking forward to the time we can return to celebrate the sacraments in our refurbished historic church.

Continuing to ask God’s blessing upon our parish of St. Mary Magdalen and with prayerful best wishes to all those who visit this site, I remain,

(The Rev.) William C. Blanda, Pastor