Gibsons' church to buy another
Charter Oak United Methodist Church in Unity Township is being sold for $750,000 to St. Michael's Catholic Church in Mt. Pleasant Township, whose financial benefactors are actor Mel Gibson and his father, Hutton Gibson.
Chris Kondrich, a member of Charter Oak's planning committee, said Monday the closing is scheduled for Sept. 1.
"We were told they wanted to say the Latin Mass there. Everybody was asking, 'Who bought the church⢠Who bought the church?'" Kondrich said. "'Is that Mel Gibson⢠Is that Mel Gibson's father?' No one ever said exactly who it was."
In mid-August, Charter Oak is moving to a $2 million complex on Frye Farm Road near Statler's Fun Center off Route 30. Church administrators couldn't generate any interest in the building until the Gibsons surfaced.
"We tried selling it on our own with no luck," Kondrich said.
Charter Oak pastor Dave Eversdyke said he does not know who the principals of St . Michael's Church are. "We have no confirmation one way or the other. There's no way for us to verify the truth of the rumor."
Attorney Dan Hewitt, of Latrobe, a member of the Charter Oak congregation, said the building at Mountain View is being purchased by St. Michael's, which was started by the actor's 87-year-old father, who recently moved to Mt. Pleasant Township from Summersville, W.Va. Hutton Gibson could not be reached for comment.
The church will be led by Leonard Bealko, a defrocked priest from the Greensburg Diocese who was affiliated with the Polish National Catholic Church in Rochester, N.Y., before returning to the area. Bealko, who lives in Commodore, Indiana County, could not be reached for comment.
The pending purchase apparently scraps plans the Gibsons had to build a church in Mt. Pleasant Township. The World Faith Foundation, which Hutton Gibson is affiliated with, purchased property with a ranch-style home earlier this year for $315,000 and planned to build a church there. It was to be known as St. Michael's.
The purchase of the Charter Oak church off Route 30 will raise St. Michael's profile because the Latin Mass attracts worshippers from all over Western Pennsylvania and some neighboring state,s but remains a controversial subject between Catholics who accept the changes that resulted from the Second Vatican Council and those who reject the legitimacy of the papacy and don't abide by many of the Vatican II reforms.
Among the changes that resulted from the council is a liturgy that requires Masses to be celebrated in English unless a local bishop permits the Latin rite.
Followers of the traditional Latin Mass do not recognize the authority of the Pope, and the Vatican does not recognize them. There are several offshoot churches in the region that celebrate masses in Latin, including a Mt. Pleasant church affiliated with the Polish National Catholic Church, Our Lady of Victory Chapel in Greensburg and Our Lady of Fatima in Carnegie, Allegheny County. St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church in Pittsburgh is the only parish sanctioned to celebrate the Latin Mass by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
St. Michael's is the second church that Mel Gibson has founded to celebrate the Mass in Latin.
He started Holy Family Catholic Church in Agoura Hills, Calif., according to the nonprofit tax returns of the A.P. Reilly Foundation in Santa Monica. Reilly is his late mother's maiden name. Gibson built a 9,000-square-foot church and contributed $5 million to the foundation he serves as CEO. His wife, Robyn, is a director of the foundation.
The views of Mel and Hutton Gibson are outside mainstream Catholicism. Some followers of the Latin Mass -- also known as the Tridentine Mass -- still blame Jews for the death of Christ, even though the Vatican repudiated that belief.
Their views stirred more controversy over the weekend after Mel Gibson was arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies for allegedly driving under the influence. After he was stopped, he reportedly launched into a tirade of anti-Semitic and sexist remarks and threatened to retaliate against the deputy who arrested him.
Gibson's father subscribes to the belief that the Holocaust is fiction and disputes historical accounts that as many as 6 million Jews were killed during World War II.
