About Our Lady of Mercy

The Catholic faith came to the Tobacco Valley with the missionaries. The Belgian Jesuit Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet first met the Kutenai people near Flathead Lake in 1842, and reached their homeland here in 1845, describing the Tobacco Plains as “a remarkable spot… surrounded by lofty mountains, which form a beautiful amphitheater.” In 1857 Father Menetrey encouraged the Kutenai to build a small log chapel near Rexford — Holy Heart of Mary Mission — where the sacraments were celebrated whenever a priest could travel through.

For decades, faith in the valley was sustained by visiting priests from St. Ignatius Mission and from across the Canadian border, among them the tireless Father Nicolas Coccola. As settlers arrived in Eureka in the early 1900s, the community raised money for a church of its own; Bishop Carroll dedicated the first Eureka church in 1910. In 1916 Father Martin Bourke became the parish’s first resident pastor, and in the years that followed the faith took root through the ordinary devotion of altar societies, summer catechism, and families who gave what they could.

The church that stands today was built under Father Gregory Burke, a native of Ireland who came to Eureka in 1955. Ground was broken in 1965, and on Easter Sunday 1966 the first Mass was offered in the new Our Lady of Mercy Church, dedicated that August by Bishop Hunthausen. Its design was made to belong to this place: the angled roof echoing the steep slopes of the mountains, and the local rock and stone carried inside and out, so that the building itself reflects the valley around it. Nearly every furnishing, from candlesticks to pews, was donated by parishioners.

Father Burke wrote at the dedication that a church is not built “only of stone and wood and mortar” but “of the sacrifices and prayers and offerings of the people of God.” That remains true. The fieldstone walls and the Pietà at the entrance are the visible signs of a community that has kept the faith in this valley for well over a century — and still gathers, still welcomes, still prays.