Several thousand flock to Uniontown for annual Byzantine Catholic pilgrimage, break ground for new monastery

For some, Labor Day weekend is a chance to squeeze the last out of the summer with grilling, picnics, family reunions and fireworks.

But for MaryAnn Kostrubanic, Labor Day weekend means traveling 50 miles from her North Huntingdon home to Mount St. Macrina in Uniontown for a Byzantine Catholic pilgrimage.

Started in 1934 by the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great, the pilgrimage focuses on Our Lady of Perpetual Help — a title used in the Catholic faith to refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

It is the largest and oldest pilgrimage of its kind in the country, according to Sister Susan Sisko.

Pilgrims filtered into a tent lined with pews Saturday for a church service alive with hymns and prayers. Older parishioners occupied benches, and families set up camp chairs or sprawled on the grass with their children to listen to the Mass.

Kostrubanic, 77, always looks forward to reconnecting with family and friends at the pilgrimage.

“I love our religious services that we have here,” she said. “I love singing with so many different people over the years, and whether we’re actually family or not, we’re family here.”

Family tradition

Since she was born, Kostrubanic has only missed three years of the annual pilgrimage.

“The only pilgrimage my mother missed was the year she gave birth to me,” Kostrubanic said, “because I was born the week after the pilgrimage.”

It’s a tradition Kostrubanic has passed down to her daughter, Mary Nunnery.

“It’s a networking of prayer, of community, of spirituality, in addition to the social aspect,” said Nunnery, 46, of Dayton, Ohio. “Having grown up with this, this is my opportunity to reconnect with my past.”

The pilgrimage is packed with services, processions and opportunities for confession and reunion with fellow parishioners, Nunnery said.

But it’s also a time for parishioners to scatter across Mount St. Macrina’s 250-acre grounds to pray — surrounded by vibrant flower beds and trickling water fountains.

“The overarching theme every single year is that even when everything else in the world is going wrong, even when everything is falling apart,” Nunnery said, “you still have Our Lady that will listen to your prayers and basically take them to her Son and be like, ‘Listen: they’re calling on you.’ ”

Erin Nagrant has attended the pilgrimage for about two decades. It’s a tradition she hopes her six children continue.

“I hope that another 90 years from now, they’re bringing their great-great-grandkids to this pilgrimage,” said Nagrant, 46, of Lorain, Ohio. “It’s a very special time to reflect and pray, and we don’t always get a chance to see this many people in this big of a crowd.”

Declining attendance

At its peak in the 1950s, the pilgrimage drew around 50,000 people to the Uniontown grounds, Sisko said.

Pilgrimage crowds have dropped to a couple thousand people each year, Sisko said.

For Nagrant, this points to a national trend of people leaving the church.

“When I first got married, there were definitely more people,” she said. “I think it just reflects general patterns across the whole church — that there’s less attendance in all of our churches with a lot of the older parishioners passing away, not as many younger people … following any tradition or any church.”

In 2019, one in five U.S. adults identified as Catholic — down about 3 percentage points from a decade prior, according to the Pew Research Center.

In Nunnery’s eyes, the impact of the annual pilgrimage and Byzantine Catholic faith remains despite declining attendance.

“With today’s movement of ‘I don’t want something so traditional. I don’t want something that has so much pomp and circumstance,’ there’s still that familiarity of it and the consolation that it brings to your heart,” she said.

People travel from across the country, Canada and Eastern Europe to attend the two-day pilgrimage, Sisko said.

“When people walk on this property, it changes you. People can feel the prayers,” she said. “When you step on the property and feel the prayers of everyone, it’s palpable.”

New monastery on the horizon

This year’s pilgrimage marks the start of a financial undertaking for the Sisters, Sisko said. The order will build a new monastery on the grounds attached to the property’s Thompson Mansion.

“We need to move out of our existing monastery,” she said. “It’s too big. It doesn’t suit our needs anymore.”

LGA Partners, out of Downtown Pittsburgh, is the architect for the project, which will be financed by the order’s savings and donors. The goal is to move into the new space by next Thanksgiving, Sisko said.

The monastery and the decades-long pilgrimage tradition would not be possible without faithful donors and parishioners, Sisko said.

“We’re so grateful that we can continue to do this. We love (our supporters), and I don’t know what we’d do without them,” she said. “They’re part of the very fabric, the tapestry of Mount St. Macrina.”