A year after the city's incorporation, Catholic families contacted a priest from Chicago, Father M. W. Barth, who had moved west for his health, to ask if he could celebrate Mass for them. The construction of the first, very small, church of St. Rita's parish, founded by Barth in 1908, was completed in 1910. In 1922, St. Rita's Catholic Church parochial school opened. During the first 100 years of St. Rita's Parish, it has on record 4,075 baptisms, 3,590 confirmations, 1,334 marriages and 1,469 funerals. The scattering of families that began with Barth in 1908 has grown to more than 1,200 Catholic parish homes today, in a city whose population is now approximately 10,580.