The village of McDonald always had a large population of Catholics, but during the 1920s, its residents had to travel to St. Rose in Girard or Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Niles to receive the Sacraments. As the population grew, a mission church was established in McDonald under the name St. Rose in 1928, with Masses celebrated in the gymnasium of Roosevelt School.
By 1933, the mission acquired an unused movable school building as a temporary worship site, and Catechism classes were taught by the Ursuline Sisters.
St. Rose mission finally became a parish with the arrival of its first resident pastor in 1943, the same year that the Diocese of Youngstown was established. The parish, having grown to encompass 200 families, immediately began raising money for a new permanent church, with the Elks Club in Youngstown and the Men’s Club of St. Edward Parish contributing funds.
The new church was completed in 1949, in addition to a parish hall and a gymnasium. That same year, the parish opened a school for kindergarten through eighth grade, taught by the Oblate Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but it closed in 1972.
In the late 1990s, the parish instituted a pledge drive to fund a major renovation of the church interior. The church was rededicated by Bishop Thomas Tobin in November of 2001. The parish also embarked on improving the involvement of its school age parishioners in the liturgy, with the addition of a children’s liturgy, expanded youth ministry programs and a scholarship for students entering college.
In 2023, a common pastor was appointed to Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Mary in Mineral Ridge and the two were joined together as a collaborative pastoral unit.
The patronage of Our Lady of Perpetual help refers to a famous Byzantine icon originally from Crete and enshrined in San Matteo in Via Merulana for almost three centuries that was associated with a Marian apparition.
