Viatorian Community
Spring 2014
Volume 19, No. 1
Viatorians Celebrate 60 Years in Las Vegas What do the Viatorian Community in Las Vegas and the University of Notre Dame share in common? A generous benefactor, named Romy Hammes, that’s what.
Bishop Gorman High School — the first and still the only Catholic high school in southern Nevada — and open a parish, St. Viator Parish.
Some 60 years later, Viatorians are still in Las The Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore is one of Vegas and arguably have been the largest congregathe most popular spots on the university campus, tion of men over the years to minister in the state. for students and visitors alike, and it resulted from “The Viatorians have a deep commitment to a donation from Hammes in 1955. Nevada,” says Fr. Thomas Long, CSV, who “Romy and Dorothy Hammes,” their son, Jerry, spent nine years in Las Vegas where he started said in a 2006 interview in the South Bend Tribune, the Viatorians’ second parish, St. Thomas More Catholic Community in suburban Henderson. “It’s “wanted to give a gift that kept on giving.” It turns out, Hammes played just as significant a been a long and multi-faceted history.” role with the Viatorians. His legacy lives on in Las Vegas, where, back in 1953, Hammes both met with Bishop Thomas Gorman and later donated land for a Catholic high school.
It started humbly, when Fr. Thomas Fitzpatrick, CSV arrived in 1954 to become the founding pastor of St. Viator Parish. With no church, he said Mass in people’s homes before moving to a local bank.
He suggested the religious community that had St. Viator Parish now is one of the oldest in the educated his children in Kankakee — the Viatorians. region, serving more than 2,500 families and more than 670 children in its school. Their meeting resulted in Viatorian priests and brothers heading west in 1954 to staff the new Continued on page 5