St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Vienna emerged out of two established southeastern Trumbull County communities: St. Vincent de Paul in Vienna and St. Bernadette in Masury.
As early as 1871, the small Catholic community in Vienna organized a congregation with the help of a priest. Though a frame church was erected and dedicated by Cleveland Bishop Richard Gilmour on June 24, 1878, the community dwindled to six families and in 1902 the mission officially closed. Yet 30 years later, St. Rose Parish in Girard conducted a survey of the Vienna area, which showed a marked increase in the Catholic population. So, St. Rose initiated an effort to organize area Catholics into a mission dedicated to Saint Vincent de Paul. With donated property and a portable one-room schoolhouse purchased with proceeds from a raffle of two tons of coal, a makeshift church was dedicated August 12, 1934, and the mission was raised to a parish by Cleveland Archbishop Bishop Joseph Schrembs— with 35 original families comprising the parish.
The parish started out with no rectory and few other resources. Home-cooked chicken dinners were started as a parish fundraiser. During the mid-1940s, the parish purchased property with hopes for building a much-needed larger church. The new church was dedicated October 28, 1945.
Meanwhile, in 1934, St. Bernadette in nearby Masury became a mission of St. Patrick Parish in Hubbard, where the community rented a wood- framed house and converted it into a chapel. Three years later, Archbishop Schrembs found that the mission had sufficient membership to become a parish. Once established, the fledging community pursued fundraising efforts for a permanent church, which was dedicated in December 1940. In the ensuing decades, St. Bernadette persevered. In the 1960s, the parish initiated a visitation of every home in the Masury area as an evangelization and outreach effort. Numerous adult and youth organizations were operated to enhance parish life.
Around 2007, the diocese assigned a common pastor for the two communities, and they merged on October 7, 2010, to become St.Thomas the Apostle Parish. Planning soon began for a new church that could seat the entire congregation, which was dedicated July 3, 2016, the feast of St. Thomas. Parishioners chose the patronage of Saint Thomas the Apostle because Thomas means “twin” in Greek and the two twin communities came together as one.
Description from The March of the Eucharist, 2nd edition (2025) published by The Catholic Echo
