NEWCASTLE (AP) – Maine’s oldest Roman Catholic parish will hold its bicentennial celebration this weekend.

St. Patrick Catholic Church, the oldest continuing parish on the Atlantic Seaboard north of St. Augustine, Fla., and the first in the nation to be named for Saint Patrick, will mark the 1808 completion of its first church building on Saturday and Sunday.

Festivities will begin at noon Saturday with the ringing of the church bell, one of the last church bells cast by Paul Revere, followed by tours of the church.

A tour of the historic church cemetery will start at 2:30 p.m., conducted by costumed parishioners.

Saturday activities will conclude with a Mass at 4 p.m. celebrated by Bishop Richard Malone in the modern $2 million church that was completed in 2004.

The weekend’s events will culminate Sunday with a Latin Mass conducted in the original church building.

Carrie Watson of Boothbay, who has been working with others since March on plans for the bicentennial, said the program was designed to appeal to history buffs as well as Catholics.

“From a historical viewpoint, anyone interested in any kind of history would find the story of the oldest Catholic church in the state fascinating,” she said.

“And in terms the architecture and structure of building, I would think people interested in those things would be interested in hearing details about its construction to learn how it’s lasted so long.”

The original small brick church sits on a hill and overlooks the Damariscotta River on the old road from Newcastle to Damariscotta Mills.

The Rev. John Lefevre de Cheverus celebrated the first Mass in the area in 1798 while returning to Boston from missionary work with the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians.

Architect Nicholas Codd designed St. Patrick’s. The walls of the church, in the early Federal style, are 1 feet thick. The small, odd-shaped bricks were made across the lake and hauled by oxen on the ice during the winter of 1807. Lime was imported from Ireland and made into mortar on site.

The original pews were backless plank benches, hewn from the nearby forests. The unique altar, built in the form of a tomb, is older than the church and is the original altar at which Father Cheverus offered Mass.

In the mid-1960s the Rev. Edward O’Brien oversaw construction of an outdoor altar that enables the church to serve visitors to the peninsula. Nearly 1,000 people attend weekend Masses at the “chapel in the pines.”

In 2004, a new church connecting the original building and the 1987 parish hall was constructed. The parish had grown threefold to 440 families from 1995 to 2004.

Watson said the weekend program would honor the spirit of its founder.

“Father Cheverus was the inspiration for the building of the church,” she said. “It’s been said that many times when he preached here, the congregation was filled with as many non-Catholic as Catholics. It didn’t matter to him what denomination people were. He might have been one of the world’s first ecumenical priests, even though he wouldn’t have used that word.”

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-07-09-08 1210EDT

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