We, the people of St. Ferdinand Parish, appreciative of our rich tradition and missionary heritage, are a Catholic community empowered by the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, and prayer.
Using our individual gifts and talents, we are called to grow in Christian faith and love, to proclaim the Gospel values, and to minister to the St. Ferdinand parish family and all the people of God.
With God's grace, we continue our apostolic mission to spread the Good News and to follow our baptismal call to be the Body of Christ.
Catholics have been turning to St. Ferdinand for over 200 years as a leader in the development and growth of the Florissant Valley. It was in the mid 1700's that the French began to arrive in the Mississippi Valley as settlers, giving birth to localities such as Florissant. Known then as St. Ferdinand de Florissant, it was a typical French Catholic village.
Like other French Catholics, one of their primary concerns was their religion. They established a village church even though the prospects of securing a priest to minister there were remote. They built the church, the first in Florissant, in 1788 at the corner of St. Ferdinand and St. Louis Streets.
In 1792, a new log church was built four blocks away and in 1820, the log church was replaced by a new brick church. For the first 20 years there was no resident pastor, and various visiting priests came to help minister to the community.
In 1823, Jesuit priests came to the area, locating at the Parish until their own building, St. Stanislaus Seminary, could be completed on another tract of land in Florissant. Father Charles F. Van Quickenborne became the first Jesuit Pastor of St. Ferdinand. This group of Jesuits came from Maryland, and most were natives of Belgium.
Father Peter J. De Smet, SJ, known as the Apostle of the Indians, was ordained at St. Ferdinand in 1827. He died in 1873 and was buried at St. Stanislaus. The first motherhouse in the United States of the Society of the Sacred Heart was established on the parish grounds by Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne shortly after her arrival in St. Louis. The first Indian school for girls in the U.S. was established at the parish as was a free school for boys and girls, one of the first institutions of its kind west of the Mississippi.
German settlers began to arrive in the mid-1840's, and came in such great numbers that by the close of the Civil War another parish was needed. Most Sacred Heart Parish was established to help meets the needs of area Catholics, which now included a great number of English and Irish settlers. The various people, despite their ethnic differences, merged into a cooperative community with their church at the center of their spiritual, civic, and social life.
The Sisters of Loretto came to the parish to staff the school in 1847. Priests of the Society of Jesus oversaw the parish until 1958 when they were needed for mission and education work and archdiocesan priests were assigned. A year earlier a new church was built on Charbonier Road in Florissant on property donated to the Archdiocese for this purpose by Tom and Mary Herbst, Sr. To prevent demolition of the old structure, Florissant residents rallied to preserve it as the Old St. Ferdinand Shrine.
The combination church and school building at the new site was used until December 1960 when a contemporary church seating 700 persons was built. From 1958 to 1961 the parish tripled in population. Several additions were built on the old school in the late 1950's and 1960's.
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