Father Ronald Cairns OMI, who has been ministering to Alexandrians’ spiritual needs for the past 27 years, says his congregation attracts Catholics of many nationalities – Nigerians, Cameroonians, Angolans, Mozambicans and Rwandans, as well as South Africans of every language group. He holds two services every Sunday morning, to allow his 1 600 worshippers to find a place in the pews of a church t
hat seats 700. He estimates that there are about 6 000 Catholics in Alexandra. “There has always been a very strong Catholic community here,” he says. His is the only Catholic church in the township. Father Cairns recounts how the church, originally called the Church of St Phillip and St James, was built in 1919. That building, together with the whole site, was expropriated by the apartheid government in 1969. The church only regained its church and site, although not the complete site, in 1984, when he took up residence in Alexandra. The present church was built by Father Hubert Tremmelon and brothers in 1930. Tremmelon gave his name to it. It is built in the Romanesque style with a high, pressed-steel ceiling and square pillars running down the central aisle. New wooden benches and charcoal slate floors, with a sky-blue altar area, add to the restfulness of the interior. Father Cairns says the church is involved in a range of activities and outreach programmes. It runs an old age home for 37 people, a crèche for pre-schoolers to Grade 1, an Aids Centre with 14 caregivers, six youth groups, and a feeding scheme for 1 000 people. Every month there is a special collection for the upkeep of the church. And parishioners take control of that maintenance, spending weekends fixing and cleaning their beloved church.
