Our History

Every parish has a story. Ours begins in the middle of a war.

A Priest Arrives

In 1942, a young priest named Joseph Martin Baker arrived in Panama City. He was a member of the Congregation of the Resurrection, the Resurrectionists, a religious order founded in Paris in 1836 by a group of Polish exiles who believed that faith and society could be raised from the dead.

Fr. Baker had been ordained only months earlier. He was sent to serve the growing population around what is now Tyndall Air Force Base, military families, defense workers, and the locals whose small city was suddenly swelling with wartime urgency.

That November, he built Our Lady of Grace Chapel, a mission church to serve the Catholic community. But it quickly became clear that something larger was needed.

Built from Salvage

Despite the material shortages of World War II, Fr. Baker broke ground on a new church in April 1944. The work was slow, the resources scarce. But on Christmas Eve, 1945, just months after the war's end, the doors opened for Midnight Mass.

The church was not yet finished inside. For a time, the priests lived in a garage at the rear of the building. But the people had a place to worship, and that was enough to begin.

The rectory came in 1949. The parish hall followed in 1950. Both were constructed with materials salvaged from the San Blas School, a government building at the site of Tyndall Air Force Base that was being dismantled. Fr. Baker, along with parish volunteers and Navy servicemen, took the school apart piece by piece and rebuilt it into a parish.

There's something fitting about that. A congregation devoted to resurrection, building a church out of what others had discarded.

Dedication

On Palm Sunday, March 29, 1953, the church, rectory, and parish hall were formally dedicated by Bishop Thomas Toolen of the Mobile-Birmingham Diocese. St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church was officially established.

But the mission didn't stop at the church walls.

A School and a Convent

In 1958, under the leadership of Fr. Leonard Prusinski, C.R., St. John's Catholic School opened its doors. It began with grades one through five and expanded over time to include eighth grade. The school was built on the same foundation as the parish itself: faith, community, and a belief that forming young minds was essential to the resurrection of society.

In January 1961, a convent was completed to house the Sisters of the Resurrection, who served both the church and the school. That building still stands today, it now houses our parish offices.

The Resurrectionist Charism

To understand St. John the Evangelist, it helps to understand the Resurrectionists.

The Congregation of the Resurrection was founded in Paris in 1836 by Bogdan Jański, along with Peter Semenenko and Jerome Kajsiewicz. They were Polish Catholics living in exile after a failed uprising against Russian rule. Their homeland was occupied. Their people were scattered. And yet they believed, stubbornly, against all evidence, that resurrection was possible. Not just for individuals, but for entire societies.

Their mission was to revive faith and hope in the hearts of the disheartened. To work for the resurrection of culture, education, and the Church itself. They established schools, parishes, and communities across Europe, Canada, and the United States.

When they came to Panama City, they brought that charism with them. The parish they founded was never just about Sunday Mass. It was about forming people (through education, through the sacraments, through contemplative prayer) who could carry the resurrection into the world.

From Then to Now

The Resurrectionists served St. John the Evangelist for decades. Their fingerprints are everywhere: in the school, in the buildings, in the spiritual character of the parish. The emphasis on prayer, on education, on community involvement, these are not accidents. They are inheritances.

Today, the parish is led by diocesan clergy, but the Resurrectionist vision endures. When we speak of St. John the Evangelist as a "School of Prayer," we are drawing on a well that was dug long before us. The founders believed that prayer was the engine of resurrection, that a community rooted in contemplation could be an agent of renewal in the world.

We are still that community. Still learning. Still praying. Still being raised.

A Living History

The church that opened on Christmas Eve, 1945, is not the building we worship in today. A new church was constructed and dedicated on October 19, 1991, the one you enter now when you come to Mass.

But the parish is continuous. The mission is the same. The altar has changed; the sacrifice has not.

We stand on the shoulders of Fr. Baker, who arrived in a boomtown during a world war and built something that outlasted both. We inherit the faith of the Sisters who taught generations of children. We carry forward the charism of a congregation that believed dead things could live again.

This is our history. But history is not only past. It is also prologue.

What will we build? What will we resurrect? The story is still being written.