First Mass.
 
Two days after his arrival, on Sunday 2nd November, Father McCann celebrated the earlier of the two masses in St Patrick's Church, Kilsyth by arrangement with Canon Turner. The new Croy priest also preached at the later mass and led the evening devotions.
The process was repeated the following Sunday, 9th November. On both of those days announcements were made at all services that the first Sunday mass at Croy would be celebrated in the new Chapel School on the third Sunday of November, the 16th of the month. Meanwhile, the first Mass in the new Holy Cross Mission had occurred on Monday 3rd November. Father McCann celebrated this mass in the upper front room on the south side of the chapel house. The server and only other participant was John Rafferty. On weekdays afterwards and up until Sunday 16th, masses were celebrated in the upper room on the north side of the house. Up to a dozen people would constitute the small congregation.
 
The first Sunday masses in Croy were conducted under primitive conditions by modern standards. The full length of the floor area was stacked with timber awaiting the carpenters. Women arriving early would be the ones lucky enough to get a seat on a pile of timber. The men and boys hunkered down, miner style around the walls and at the back. The altar and priest's seat were a kitchen table and chair provided by the Rafferty family, carried from their home before each service and carried back afterwards. Father McCann initiated a 4.30pm Sunday class where 'the most elementary truths of the Catholic faith were explained in a homely way.'  The dark winter afternoons were lit by small paraffin lamps placed on the window sills. A quarter of a century later, Father McCann reminisced as follows:
 
'All at Mass, men, women and children and the crowded school of men in the afternoon gave unconsciously a powerful sermon or lesson on patient endurance, under unusual difficulties on those dark, often wet Sundays of the winter of 1902.'