26-05-2025
After 30 years, Fr. Jerry Mahon leaves legacy of hope, faith and charity at St. John the Evangelist
May 26—ROCHESTER — Thirty years is a long time to be in the same job.
For a Catholic priest in the Winona-Rochester diocese, it's practically unprecedented.
So, when Fr. Jerry Mahon steps down as pastor at the Co-Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on July 1, 2025, he will be stepping down from a job he's held for more than 30 years, a job that has shaped his life but also a job where he has helped shape the Catholic community both at St. John's and in Rochester as a whole.
"We have a policy of 12 years to move," Mahon said, speaking of his longevity at the church. "The bishop said next year is your term ... and then the relocation of Lourdes High School came up, and lay people submitted my name to lead the campaign, which was millions of dollars. So the bishop said, now you need to stay."
Then a change of bishops came, and the new bishop told him to stay.
Priests, he said, are supposed to retire at 68. "I'm going to be 80, so I stayed a little longer than they anticipated."
Mahon was born at Saint Marys Hospital and raised on a farm north of Rochester. He graduated from Lourdes High School and attended church at St. Francis of Assisi parish in Rochester. After high school, he felt called to serve as a priest, eventually getting ordained at St. Francis in 1971.
He spent 18 years at Immaculate Heart of Saint Mary Seminary in Winona. "So, I've had longevity of my assignments," he said.
After stints in Winona at the seminary and also serving as vicar general for the Diocese of Winona, then-Bishop John Vlazny installed Mahon at St. John the Evangelist in 1994. Mahon said after he's helped with renovations at the seminary and other parts of the diocese, the bishop made St. John's seem like a respite from all the construction and remodeling work he'd been tasked with in the past.
"(Vlazny said) you can just go and appreciate this church building and school," Mahon said he was told. "But that isn't the way it turned out."
Part of the Second Vatican Council was a directive to make churches more welcoming to the community. "We recognized the need for hospitality," he said.
That meant making changes.
The interior of the church was turned around — the altar is now on the east side of the space — and the former gym for the school was turned into a welcoming space with plenty of room for events and gathering.
The church purchased the former Heritage Hotel, then traded that property for a Mayo Clinic property immediately west of the church to build a new gym for the school, which then was doubled in size.
St. John's also added its chapel on the east side along Fourth Avenue. This, he said, proved especially popular with both the parish community and visitors to Rochester, particularly visitors to Mayo Clinic.
"A major factor in our community are guests from the Mayo medical community," Mahon said. "Every day consistently, people coming to pray.
"Our demographic is employment at Mayo," Mahon said. "We don't have any houses around us here for the most part. So, people get connected to us through Mayo, and we've always had a very significant relationship with the leadership of Mayo."
That relationship survives because the parish has worked to always be good neighbors with Mayo Clinic.
While the parish isn't a typical neighborhood parish, Mahon said one of the missions he's long overseen is tending to those in need downtown. Homeless individuals often come looking for resources. "That's been a major part of our ministry here."
Mahon pointed not just to the beauty of the building as it's been remodeled, but the artwork and the music as creating a place that is both inviting and uplifting for visitors and regular parishioners.
Part of that is the music ministry at St. John's. This came about due to another aspect of Mahon's spiritual life.
Since 1996, Mahon has belonged to the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, which was founded by an Italian priest, Fr. Luigi Giussani. When Giussani died in February 2005, Mahon went to the funeral in Milan. At a dinner after the funeral, he met Sebastian Modarelli, who was then a composition student at a music conservatory in Milan.
Eventually, Mahon convinced Modarelli to visit for an interview later that year, hiring him in October that year as the church's director of music and liturgy.
Another newcomer that same autumn was Fr. John Lasuba, who came from Sudan. Fr. John helped the St. John's community with its support of a school that began in South Sudan, but has since been moved to Uganda due to the civil war in South Sudan.
"We're educating 400 students in six refugee camps," Mahon said. "Tremendous poverty, a need for food, a need for everything. But their parents are filled with such a passion that their children get an education."
The church, each year, holds a benefit dinner to raise funds for the school in Uganda, and children from St. John's school downtown often hold drives to get necessary items — shoes and backpacks, for example — for their African counterparts.
Mahon said it's the concept of "going to the peripheries" that Pope Francis spoke about. He's personally visited the school in Africa "three or four times."
He also has spent 31 years as a member of the Rochester Catholic Schools board of trustees, serving on the board when the independent parish schools joined to form under one administrative umbrella.
Mahon said all the renovation that brought physical change to the building of St. John's generated a strong community.
"I'd say they go together," he said. "The purpose was to move us toward a greater sense of community and partnership with the city and hospitality."
What will he miss when he's no longer at St. John's every day?
"A hundred things," he said. But it comes down to relationships, administering the sacraments and watching as the community he's been a part of changes as new students, new Mayo Clinic employees and new visitors call St. John's home — or a home away from home.
On a recent weekend, he said, a couple approached him to say they'd heard he was retiring. They explained that they came every year for a checkup, and when in Rochester made sure to visit St. John's.
"I had an opportunity for different ministries," he said, citing his time a vicar general and with the seminary in Winona. "I love being a priest, and I have loved the gift of being here, and so my heart is filled with gratitude."
As for his 54 years in the priesthood, he said, "I really was called to be a priest. It isn't as if it's been a kind of struggle. It's been a joy because it's what I was called to be. ... It's a gift. It's a grace, honestly."
