Saint Mark Parish was established as a parish community in October of 1993 as part of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The parish was the result of the merger of Saint Eugene Parish in Liberty Borough and Saint Joseph Parish in Port Vue. Reverend Gerald Mikonis was appointed the first pastor of Saint Mark Parish. He served the new parish community for eighteen years. The first Mass was celebrated in the auditorium of South Allegheny High School.
In February of 2011, Reverend Daniel T. Straughn was appointed the new pastor of Saint Mark Parish. He served until the start of the On Mission for the Church Alive! implementation period beginning October 15, 2018. At that time, Reverend Thomas A. Wagner was named Administrator for Saint Mark Parish, Saint Michael Parish, and Queen of the Rosary Parish. The "Elizabeth, Glassport, South Allegheny Catholic Community" came together to prepare for merger. On January 4, 2021, the new Saints Joachim and Anne Parish was established.
The winged lion is the traditional symbol for our Patron Saint, the evangelist Saint Mark, for three primary reasons. At the beginning of his Gospel, Saint Mark presents “a voice of one crying out in the desert,” as if the roar of a lion (Mark 1:3), calling for conversion and necessary preparation in welcoming Jesus into the world and our lives. The winged lion also is used to represent Saint Mark because his Gospel reveals Jesus as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Finally, the wings of the lion represent the revelation, from the very beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Mark, of “Jesus Christ [as] the Son of God” (Mark 1:1); the wings signify a connection to the Divine, or, indeed, the Divine itself.
The meaning and significance of this particular depiction of the winged lion for Saint Mark Parish reveals that our parish family is alive and vibrant, strong and on the move, like Jesus in the Gospel. Our winged lion immediately evokes in all of us a sense of strength and vibrancy in our faith, and perseverance in accepting and living the Gospel message of God’s mighty and tender love, most emphatically revealed by the Holy Cross – for at the heart of the lion is the Cross of Christ Jesus.
Sacrifice, signified by the crimson field, is a core value of our parish family which believes we are called to “make holy” all that has been given to us by God, and witness to God’s mighty and tender love for us and the world by our very lives.
Humility, signified in the sandstone colored lion, is a core value of our parish family which believes we are “grounded” by our relationship with Jesus Christ which makes us who we are – sons and daughters of God Almighty.
This depiction of the winged lion – symbol for Saint Mark – appropriately reveals the essence of the Gospel and the essence of our parish family: strength, vibrancy, sacrifice and humility, and at the heart of it all, the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ the Lord which reveals the profound reality of His mighty and tender love.
The second Gospel was written by St. Mark, who, in the New Testament, is sometimes called John Mark. Both he and his mother, Mary, were highly esteemed in the early Church, and his mother’s house in Jerusalem served as a meeting place for Christians there.
St. Mark was associated with St. Paul and St. Barnabas (who was Mark’s cousin) on their missionary journey through the island of Cyprus. Later he accompanied St. Barnabas alone. We know also that he was in Rome with St. Peter and St. Paul. Tradition ascribes to him the founding of the Church in Alexandria.
St. Mark wrote the second Gospel, probably in Rome sometime before the year 60 A.D.; he wrote it in Greek for the Gentile converts to Christianity. Tradition tells us that St. Mark was requested by the Romans to set down the teachings of St. Peter. This seems to be confirmed by the position which St. Peter has in this Gospel. In this way the second Gospel is a record of the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of the Prince of the Apostles. His feast day is April 25. He is the patron saint of notaries.