As more Catholics settled in the area, a traveling priest John A. Beshel, the Chaplain of the Nazareth Orphanage, occasionally celebrated mass in the living room of the home of the Bolus family, using a closet as a confessional.

The train car, which included a bedroom and kitchen for the priest, an altar, and sixty seats for congregants, was parked at the Seaboard Railroad by Bishop Eugene J. McGuinness, and was used until February 1940.

[1] In the 1930s Bishop McGuinness' cousin, the papal countess Katherine E. Price, visited Wake Forest and was surprised that the college town did not have a Catholic Church.

He made Wake Forest the headquarters of the Missionary Fathers from a mobile trailer-chapel called Madonna of the Highways, located near St. Catherine's.

The trailer was dedicated on May 6, 1948 by the Apostolic Delegate Amleto Giovanni Cicognani at the annual convention of the North Carolina Catholic Laymen Association in Wilmington.

[1] On August 14, 1966 a transport tractor trailer struck a power pole and trees along the front side of the church.