At St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in West Baltimore, the pastor’s message on Easter was to be familiar, but with an added twist: The resurrection of Christ should inspire the congregants in tumult in this transitioning parish.
“The core of the Easter message is new life,” said the Rev. Monsignor Richard J. Bozzelli, who’ll give the sermon. “This year, we’re focused on our new life as a parish.”
In December, St. Peter Claver, a 137-year-old church, lost its autonomy in the sweeping realignment plan mandated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The initiative, called Seek The City To Come, merged its 61 parishes into 30 worship sites due to dwindling attendance and declining revenues. Especially hard hit was West Baltimore, an enclave of historic and predominantly Black churches, whose five parishes were channeled into one — St. Bernardine, in Edmondson Village.
Gone are the struggling parishes of St. Pius V, St. Gregory the Great and St. Edward. And while congregants at St. Peter Claver retained their sanctuary for Sunday worship, they lost the sovereignty to run the church themselves.
“Everyone’s faith here was diminished by that decision,” said Ray Kelly, 55, whose family has attended St. Peter Claver, on Fremont Street, for four generations. “A lot of us are happy that we can still worship in our cultural home, but there’s a lot of grumbling and spiritual pain. The church is, by nature, traditional — and there’s a lot of reluctance to change.”
Still, Kelly is optimistic, hoping that Holy Week is the catalyst to help jump-start that renewal.
“People are trying to come together,” he said. “I see Easter as a time of resurrection for us all, to remind [parishoners] that the faith is still in them. We mean to bring things back.”
Danise Jones-Dorsey attended St. Gregory the Great for 35 years before the church on Gilmor Street closed in December. Though fiercely loyal to her former parish, she has embraced the future.
“Tears come when I remember what we had,” said Jones-Dorsey, 73. “The loss [of a parish] can paralyze you, but if the church is going to grow, it has to be pruned. What we’ve learned from Holy Week is that, like Jesus, without death there’s no way we can grow.”
Bozzelli’s charges say their pastor has moved slowly, with a planned deliberation, to make changes to the parish culture brought about by the merger. Preaching patience will pay off, Bozzelli promised.
“When we brought the five parishes together, people said, ‘Let’s just have a big town hall meet-and-greet party and it’ll be fine.’ I said, ‘No, no, no,’ the priest said. “The worst thing is to bring a group together who are hurting because their parishes are closing. They don’t know each other, so they hang around with only the people they know, and you have a big room filled with five [isolated] groups.”
Bozzelli, 64, took a different tack. He trod the streets, knocked on doors and met with more than 50 congregants, one-on-one, to better understand their grief, as well as their hopes and fears. Bonds needed to be forged, and relationships established, he said. The group hug comes later.
“Organize around relationships and people tend to stick together,” Bozzelli said. “It’s hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that this is all one parish now, but give it time. Done right, people will begin to understand.”
Parishioners like Kelly applaud the strategy.
“Father Rich is very collaborative; he’s making sure that people from all five parishes feel heard,” Kelly said. “It’s a herculean task, figuring out the compromises, but he has a vision and is handling it well.”
The approach appeals to Jones-Dorsey, too.
“What I most respect is [Bozzelli’s] willingness to establish a consensus. He acknowledges everyone,” she said. “Father Rich could easily say, ‘It’s my way or the highway,’ like some others do, but he prefers to put in the work to come to a consensus — and that is an amazing gift.”
Though St. Bernardine is the hub of the new parish, Bozzelli is determined that St. Peter Claver, its other worship center, not be downplayed.
“I don’t want [the latter] to be an afterthought,” he said. To that end, he chose to deliver the Easter homily there, while an associate pastor served St. Bernardine.
At the pastor’s behest, Jones-Dorsey said: “Members of St. Bernardine have invited [those from the other churches] to meet with them individually, to get to know us. It’s labor-intensive work, but the reality is that you can’t be angry with someone whom you’ve humanized.”
Sunday, attending St. Bernardine for her first Easter service there, her feelings will be bittersweet, Jones-Dorsey said:
“I’ll be remembering Easter at St. Gregory, but I won’t feel like I’ve been cast to the wind.”
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