KENT – Members of Holy Spirit Parish created a float for their community parade highlighting the parish’s 100-year-old St. Anthony Chapel.

“They’re building a float that will help evangelize,” said Brenda Fincher, pastoral assistant for outreach and pastoral care at Holy Spirit Parish. 

Fincher said she has encountered people who don’t know there is a Catholic church in Kent. So the parish entered the float in the Kent Cornucopia Days Grand Parade July 14.

The parish was inspired by the award-winning float created last year by members of Holy Rosary Parish in Edmonds, Fincher said. They even were able to use the plans from Holy Rosary as a basis for their chapel, she said.

Holy Spirit’s float is “going to look like a miniature version of the chapel,” Fincher said, and will include a statue of St. Anthony and pews.

Parishioners from the parish’s diverse cultural communities walked alongside the float during the parade (watch here). Holy Spirit offers Mass in four languages — English, Spanish, Swahili and Chuukese (a Micronesian language) — and also has parishioners from Thailand, Vietnam, Britain and Samoa, Fincher said.

Members of Holy Spirit Parish in Kent, including Abraham Gomez dressed as St. Anthony, gather on and around their parish’s parade float July 14 during the Kent Cornucopia Days festivities. The float celebrates the centennial of the parish’s St. Anthony Chapel. (Photo: Courtesy of Brenda Fincher)

About a dozen people helped build the float and youth group members helped decorate it, said Miguel Chavez, a member of Holy Spirit’s pastoral council and centennial committee who helped build the float.

The group encountered some challenges — such as making sure the float is under 14 feet tall so it can maneuver under traffic lights, Chavez said.

A few days before the parade, volunteers were putting the finishing touches their creation.

“We’re still trying to figure out details on how to anchor the miniature St. Anthony Chapel to the trailer,” Chavez said.

The float honors the history of the parish, originally known as St. Anthony Parish, which was established in 1906, according to a history on the parish website. Construction of the church, with room for 325 people, began in 1924. It was dedicated the following year by Bishop Edward J. O’Dea.

As the parish expanded over the years, a new rectory and parish hall were built in 1957, followed by a religious education complex in 1972.

In 1994, the parish broke ground on the parish campus for its current church, which seats about 700 people. The first Mass was celebrated April 9, 1995, Fincher said.

With construction of the new church came a change in the parish name — to reduce confusion with St. Anthony Parish in Renton, located about 8 miles away, Fincher said. Before the name change, people would show up at the wrong St. Anthony Church for weddings and funerals, she said.

Parishioners chose the name Holy Spirit from three options, Fincher noted.

Today, St. Anthony Chapel continues to be used for daily Masses, weddings and funerals, she said.

In February, the parish will mark the chapel’s centennial with a special celebration, Chavez said.

In the meantime, the parish float “will bring more awareness of the chapel, the parish and the [faith] community” that has been in the Kent Valley for 100 years, Chavez said.

After some 50 parishioners and the float appeared in the parade, “now people know Holy Spirit is part of the community,” Fincher said July 15.

See a 360-degree video of the float on the parish’s Facebook page.

Watch the parish float in the Cornucopia Days parade here.