Special Mass to pay tribute to our African-American community and St. Joseph's Mission

Holy Family will celebrate Black History Month in a special Mass Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 9:45 a.m. to honor the generations of African-Americans of the Great Migration era who worshiped and attended elementary school at the parish’s former St. Joseph’s Mission opened at 13 ^th and S. Loomis Street in 1933 on Chicago’s west side by its founder, Rev. Arnold J. Garvy, S.J., a Jesuit priest.

“The special liturgy to honor Holy Family’s African -American parishioners who once worshiped in an era when Catholic parishes unfortunately reflected the times and were largely racially segregated may be one of the last scheduled public Sunday morning masses celebrated in the fully restored Victorian Gothic cathedral-size church founded by Rev. Arnold Damen, S.J. in 1857 that has served generations of Chicagoans—Irish, Germans, Italians, African-Americans and Hispanics,” said Rev. Mike Gabriel, pastor.  

Late last month, Cardinal Blasé Cupich announced that Holy Family’s well attended and spirited Sunday morning 9:45 Mass, where Gospel music and rousing spirituals are sung by an integrated choir whose voices often perform sacred hymns and Celtic tunes, is to be terminated and hundreds of parishioners are told to merge with nearby Notre Dame de Chicago effective July 1.  
   
“Today, Holy Family’s African-American parishioners are very distressed by Cardinal Cupich’s decision to terminate Holy Family’s well attended spirited Sunday morning 9:45 Mass because of a planned merger with nearby Notre Dame de Chicago, announced late last month by the Archdiocese of Chicago,” Father Gabriel said.

Hundreds of parishioners, friends and supporters of Holy Family have signed a giant 60-foot “Prayerful Petition and an online version which has been presented to Cardinal Cupich asking him to please reconsider his decision, explained Father Gabriel.

“Many of our long-time African-American parishioners are puzzled by the Archdiocese’s determination to merge this parish with a neighboring Catholic community when they have considered Holy Family to be their home for over 60 years,” said Father Gabriel.
 
“Holy Family’s motto is ‘our doors are open wide,’” explained Father Gabriel, an Archdiocese of Chicago priest.  “That’s more than a snappy slogan,” he said.

“The real genesis of our motto, “he explains,” began in 1933 when Father Garvy, S.J., a 65-year-old white Irish-American Jesuit priest, a former classics and English professor, took a big leap and in tribute to the St. Joseph Society for Coloured Missions, a 19 ^th century network of chapels and schools throughout the South, opened St. Joseph’s Colored Mission in the southwest corner of Holy Family parish.

“Together, this Jesuit priest and five dedicated sisters who left a comfortable convent to teach for $ 35 a month, “transformed the moral and civic condition of the near west side of the city,” Father Garvy once told a tour of visitors to St. Joseph’s. 

Father Garvy was a native of the Holy Family neighborhood.  One of seven children, he was born on nearby Lytle street and baptized in Holy Family church by Father Damen, S.J. in 1868. His father, John, was a successful building contractor who sat on the West Side Parks Commission and the Chicago School Board.

Father Garvy entered the Jesuits in 1885 and during his early training and formative years he worked with minorities in Kansas, Missouri and Montana.  Ordained in 1900, Father Garvy taught in Jesuit schools throughout the Midwest.

At one time he was chancellor and dean of Saint Louis University.
He returned to the city in 1930 and taught English and classics at Loyola University Chicago where he organized the school’s black students into a Guild with an extensive social and educational program.

For a time he was librarian at St. Ignatius High School, Holy Family’s neighbor, now the 150-year-old St. Ignatius College Prep.  During his tenure, Father Garvy organized the library’s Dewey decimal system and acquired more than 38,000 volumes.  To assist researchers who were studying black culture and accomplishments, he created a massive bibliography of famous African-Americans, some 24,000 index cards with 500,000 items on them.  
“But Father Garvy’s lasting contribution was as a pioneer who advocated that the Catholic Church should be an inclusive welcoming place for all people, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said Father Gabriel.   

In 1933, Father Garvy left his teaching post and opened St. Joseph Mission where African Americans who lived in modest residences in the near west side came to worship in its chapel and attended elementary school taught by five nuns, Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, a Polish order of nuns who left a comfortable convent to teach young black children for $35 a month and the opportunity to live on the top floor of an old building.   
Together, this Jesuit priest and five nuns transformed the moral and civic condition of the near west side of the city. 

St. Joseph’s Mission also was a place where African Americans were served hot food and given donated clothing and blankets. Father Garvy, a Jesuit for 60 years, served at St. Joseph’s until 1942 and died in 1950 at 82.
 
Following the Our Lady of Angels fire in north Austin, St. Joseph’s Mission was declared unsafe and closed, Father Gabriel said.   

“In the 1950s, black students were then welcomed at Holy Family elementary school and their parents and guardians became members of the parish’s primarily white congregation.  The neighborhood we call Little Italy today, began to become racially integrated.   

“We’re greatly indebted to those original African-American parishioners, for it was they and their later generations who stood with Father George A. Lane, S.J., and members of the Holy Family Preservation Society when the city’s second oldest church was threatened with certain demolition in the late 1980s. Together, black, white and Hispanic parishioners, friends and supporters raised more than $6 million to restore the cathedral-size Victorian Gothic church built by its founding pastor, Father Damen, S.J., in 1857-1860, “Father Gabriel explained.  

Holy Family today is a vibrant and diverse parish comprised of black, white, Hispanic and Asian parishioners, some of who walk to church and others who drive as much as 100 miles round-trip from the Chicago metropolitan area to worship at our Sunday morning 9:45 Mass, “Father Gabriel explained.
 
“Unlike many parishes facing mergers or consolidation, Holy Family is fiscally sound, with a balanced o perating budget, no debt, and a $ 1.1 million “rainy day” fund on deposit in the Archdiocese of Chicago bank earmarked for major projects and emergency expenditures, “ explained Thomas Justic, chairman of the parish’s financial committee.

As a center for evangelization, despite its age, Holy Family is a growing parish, “Father Gabriel said.

Nearly 100 weddings are celebrated at Holy Family each year, including about a fourth of these couples who are alumni of neighboring St. Ignatius College Prep, he said.  And, in recent years we’ve experienced a significant growth in young families with more than 80 baptisms and significant size First Communion and Confirmation classes, Father Gabriel explained.