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St. tHomaS more cHurcH
St. Thomas More Church got a bit of a rocky start when it was founded in 1953 in the inner-ring Rochester suburb of Brighton.
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IIt took ve years to complete construction of the church due to legal battles over the sale of the 2617 East Avenue property on which the church
now stands.
Bishop James E. Kearney dedicated the church building on Nov. 1, 1958.
Until the church was completed, the parish celebrated Masses at St. John Fisher College. Father Frances Pegnam was the founding pastor and served the parish until his retirement in 1982. He also oversaw the building on an elementary school, which later became Siena Academy and is the only Catholic middle school in the Rochester area.
The parish established a memorial fund in the late 1900s to bene t Rochester’s St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in honor of another beloved pastor, Father Andrew Grzela, who died after serving both parishes for only a year.
A renovation project for the church building, the rectory and carriage house was undertaken at the end of the 1990s.
The parish clustered with Brighton’s Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in 2008.