File:St. Gregory the Great RC Church, Amherst, New York - 20220204.jpg

English: St. Gregory the Great Roman Catholic Church, 1660 Maple Road, Amherst, New York, February 2022. The largest Catholic congregation in the Buffalo diocese, St. Gregory the Great counts a population of about 15,000 registered parishioners and an enrollment of over 600 students in its parochial school. The gargantuan church is in a striking Modernist style, with a vaguely dove-shaped footprint and a wide covered terrace underneath sheltering the entrance. A butterfly roof is oriented perpendicularly to the façade, with a Modernist open-work bell tower to the left. The interior contains several newer stained-glass windows as well, including one depicting the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin that was designed in 2015 by the locally-based McHugh Art Studios as an imitation of the Munich School of stained-glass art whose designs are popular in many of the Buffalo Diocese's older Catholic church buildings. St. Gregory the Great traces its history back to August 22, 1957, when the Buffalo Diocese completed the purchase of a 23-acre farmstead previously belonging to Katherine Klein for use as the site of a new church to serve the Catholic population of what was now a rapidly suburbanizing section of Amherst. Its immense size was apparently by design, or at least accurately predicted: in November 1958, when the congregation was only a few months old, plans were unveiled for the enormous campus that included not only a church but also a rectory, a convent, and a large school building with 11 classrooms, a gymnasium and auditorium, cafeteria, and extensive outdoor recreational facilities including Little League-grade baseball diamonds. The complex was intended to be complete and ready for occupancy by autumn 1959, but growth at first came slowly: the first building to be completed was the school, which opened to students in 1960 and whose auditorium doubled as the worship space for Sunday services (which had previously been held in the chapel of the St. Mary of the Angels Motherhouse in Williamsville). The church building was dedicated in October 1968, and new construction has proceeded apace since: most recently, the year 2000 saw the dedication of the aforementioned bell tower, a new rectory and "ministry center" comprising a vast performance space, meeting rooms, a commercial kitchen and food pantry, and a Catholic-supply store (off the right-hand margin of the photograph) and also the installation of the enormous 43-by-25-foot dalle-de-verre Crucifixion scene onto the façade. Rendered in multicolored stained glass, it depicts John the Apostle, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Christ, and a Roman soldier gathered around the cross.