PARISH GREETS PASTOR AT NEW SAUGUS CHURCH; CONSTRUCTION PLANNED AT SITE.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Twenty years after the last Catholic church opened in the Santa Clarita Valley, a fledgling congregation officially became a parish and its first pastor was installed Sunday at a special Mass.

Bishop Gerald Wilkerson from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles did the honors during 11 a.m. Mass at Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Church, where the Rev. Michael Slattery was named the pastor of a 2,600-family flock.

The installation ceremony included prayers to grant Slattery spiritual leadership. It came two days before the Roman Catholic Church's feast day for Kateri, who is one level below canonization and eventually is expected to become the first American Indian elevated to sainthood.

Blessed Kateri opened in July, with Cardinal Roger Mahony on hand to welcome the congregation - initially considered a mission of St. Clare's Catholic Church in Canyon Country - to the archdiocese. Built on a 9.6-acre site on Copper Hill Drive near Seco Canyon Road, the skylit hall of rough-hewn stone actually is the parish center but is serving as worship space until money can be raised for construction of the church.

That task will fall to Slattery - Father Mike to his congregation - a man who knows a little something about fund raising and construction.

Slattery, 59, was previously pastor of St. John Baptist De La Salle Catholic Church, a Granada Hills parish that sustained about $3 million in damage from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

``There were three buildings destroyed - two halls and a convent. We had to demolish them,'' Slattery recalled. ``We also had to do a lot of repair work in the church and the school.''

Building a new hall containing parish offices and banquet facilities, and repairing other damage, cost about $4.3 million, Slattery said. St. John Baptist de la Salle is a parish of about 3,300 families, with a parochial school that serves 600 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Insurance covered about $1 million of the expenses. ``The rest of it we had to save and fund raise,'' the pastor said. ``When I left, there was about $378,000 due'' on the balance, Slattery noted.

At the end of June, Slattery bade farewell to the Granada Hills parishioners he had led for a dozen years, reporting to work the next day at his new assignment in Saugus.

It wasn't the first tour of duty in the Santa Clarita Valley for Slattery, an Irish-born priest ordained 36 years ago. ``I was here from 1967 to 1973 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help,'' he said. Back then, OLPH was the only Catholic church in the valley, later sprouting an offshoot in St. Clare's, which became a parish in 1978.

Slattery recalled a region far different than the populous suburbia of today. ``I liked it because it was rather rural,'' he said. ``You knew everybody in the community.''

The pastor said he hopes to retain that sense of community in the burgeoning parish, where church secretary Judy Konieczny said parents have been asking to put their kids' names on a waiting list for Blessed Kateri's elementary school - which has yet to be built. ``We don't even know when we're going to break ground,'' she said.

``We've been registering tons of new families,'' Konieczny added. ``When the cardinal saw that we were self-sufficient, (the archdiocese) appointed a new pastor to come in and take over,'' she said.

Blessed Kateri has weekend Masses at 5:30 p.m. Saturday and at 8 a.m., 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Sunday, and Slattery spent his first weekend presiding over all four. ``I introduced myself and got a very good welcome,'' he said. ``It was kind of exhilarating to see young families with their young children, worshiping and giving praise to the Lord.''

The new pastor's to-do list is a long one, and the item at the top is paying off the current debt of $2.8 million, an objective he hopes the parish can meet within five years. ``Then we'll build a church for about 1,200 people,'' Slattery said.

Coming from a 45-year-old parish, Slattery said taking the helm of a brand new one is a challenge he relishes. ``I think it'll be a wonderful opportunity to lead the people into the millennium spiritually and with a vision of hope,'' the pastor said.

Before Blessed Kateri was built, the congregation held Masses in an auditorium at Arroyo Seco Junior High.

Kateri Tekakwitha, the daughter of a Mohawk chief and a mother from the Algonquin tribe, was born in 1656 in upstate New York. As a child, she fell ill with smallpox, which killed her parents and brother but spared her.

Jesuit missionaries converted Kateri to Christianity and baptized her at age 20. A year later, she fled to Canada to live in a colony of Indian Christians.

Kateri, who came to be known as ``Lily of the Mohawks,'' was only 24 when she died during Easter week 1680. Pope John Paul II beatified Kateri Tekakwitha 300 years after her death, declaring her blessed and making her a candidate for sainthood.