Sacramental registers that are bound books with handwritten entries are the only official and reliable record of the sacraments – these books must be preserved and maintained. These registers reflect the history of the cultural and spiritual life of the parish community. In no case should the bound sacramental registers ever be destroyed. While databases can be beneficial for tracking names and other information, they can only be used alongside the handwritten bound registers and cannot replace them.
If you need to send a notation for a baptismal record, or find a sacramental record from a closed or merged parish, but aren’t certain where the records reside, please phone the Archives, or check this page on Catechist Café: https://catechistcafe.weebly.com/sacramental-records.html. The Archives Office is pleased to search for sacramental records of closed parishes and is happy to assist parishes as needed, please contact us at 330-744-8451 x290. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at jlawson@youngstowndiocese.org (Joan Lawson) or hshaw@youngstowndiocese.org (Hannah Shaw).
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