Parishes come together to offer Catholic presence, confessions at Washington Town & Country Fair

Amid the rumble of tractors, the bleating of livestock in the show pavilion and the swell of music drifting from the main stage, another scene drew steady crowds at this year’s Washington Town & Country Fair — a priest in full clerical attire hearing confessions.

Father Ryan Truss set up a makeshift confessional near the “Washington Catholics” booth, a joint effort of several parishes in Washington and surrounding areas during the fair’s Aug. 5-9 run.

Father Truss teamed up with his pastor, Father Nick Winker, and Father Jeff Maassen, pastor of St. Francis Borgia Parish and Assumption in New Haven. Parishioners helped staff the booth, offering rosaries, holy cards and other religious items and sacramentals, along with a Catholic-themed photo booth. Signs marked with a red and green light let fairgoers know when Father Truss was available to hear confessions. Several other priests helped with confessional duties throughout the week.

“It was successful beyond anything I could have imagined,” said Father Truss, associate pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Washington and St. John the Baptist-Gildehaus and chaplain at St. Francis Borgia High School in Washington. “Lots of people turned out to come to confession at the fair.”

The idea came to him at last year’s fair when someone had mentioned to the priest it had been years since their last confession. The thought came back to Father Truss over the following months.

“The more it did, the more I thought maybe this is coming from the Holy Spirit,” he said.

Father Truss said the sacrament drew a large number of young people. By his estimate, more than half of those who came were high schoolers or college students. He credited much of that turnout to personal invitation.

“Many people told me they were coming to confession because they had been invited by a friend,” he said.

Some of the busiest stretches came during the fair’s evening concerts on the main stage, just down the hill from where Father Truss was hearing confessions. He had to shout in order to be heard over the music, and by Sunday morning had lost much of his voice. He joked with parishioners at Sunday Mass that his hoarse voice was the result of “yelling at sinners in confession.”

Traffic for confessions throughout the weekend alternated between hourlong stretches of steady confessions and other moments where there were no penitents. Along with Catholics returning to the sacrament after years away, nonCatholics also stopped by the booth to ask questions about the faith or request prayers, he said.

Father Truss said he was struck by fairgoers’ reactions to seeing a priest hearing confessions in public in full clerical attire.

“Even if they didn’t receive the sacrament right then and there, my hope is that it was a reminder to them of God’s love and mercy,” he said. “On occasion, as I was extending my hands for absolution, I would look up and see people staring at us as they walked past — not staring in a rude way, but in a way that showed they were deeply moved by the sight. Perhaps God will use that sight to bring even more people back to Him.”

An 8-foot Divine Mercy image was placed behind the confessional, a nod to the Catholic identity of the area, Father Truss said. The signs are common throughout Washington and Franklin County.

“Washington — and Franklin County as a whole — is a deeply Catholic area,” he said. “Everywhere you drive around here, you see the Divine Mercy image with the words, ‘Jesus, I trust in You.’”

Having the sign present at the fair “was very fitting, since people were coming to receive His Mercy,” Father Truss said.