Archdiocese of Baltimore presents Seek the City to Come proposal to the Hispanic community

En Español

About 250 parishioners from 11 parishes gathered at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Bayview for a Spanish-language presentation of the parish reconfiguration proposal as part of the Seek the City to Come initiative.

In remarks at the beginning of the session, Auxiliary Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, C.Ss.R., vicar for Baltimore City, cited factors that led the archdiocese to work on this plan together with the communities, and presented an initial proposal of how the parishes would be merged and listened to representatives from each parish community express their concerns, counterproposals and comments.

The bishop told the Catholic Review that some parishes will have to be sacrificed to allow others to be more viable and sustainable. The proposal envisions moving from 61 parishes at 59 worship sites to 21 parishes at 26 worship sites.

“With our presence in another community that is in difficulties, we are strengthening and nourishing that community, giving an infusion of life to that parish. I know it is losing something, but at the same time it is gaining something and it is a work of charity that we are asking of our Latino communities at this time for Seek the City to Come,” he said.

Likewise, Bishop Lewandowski said he knows that “it is not something easy because many of our parishioners have come from their countries and are in their (new) home, they have founded communities, they have created spaces in life for the community, to grow, develop and settle in this country. I am not saying that it is easy, but at least we have to consider this option now that we have this opportunity”.

Franciscan Father Edgardo Jara, director of the Office of Evangelization and Pastoral Planning of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., invited the faithful present to participate in the session with their hearts and minds ready to contribute to a process that is moving forward on the road to synodality. 

During the presentation of the proposal, Bishop Lewandowski noted that the population of Baltimore City has decreased 38 percent since 1950. Just last year, 1.5 percent of the population left the city. 

“Racism and gentrification have played a role in the dramatic population changes,” he said. “We know well what racism means. Sometimes we have been victims of people who do not respect us, our language, our culture, our faith. And racism has a lot to do with the movement of people.”

For Bishop Lewandowski, the high maintenance costs of the old buildings are one of the biggest problems. 

“It has made it difficult to carry out the mission, and our focus should be on people and ministry and not on buildings,” he said. “A lot of our resources in the city go paying for energy, water, gas, roofing, cleaning, repairs, air conditioning, heating, security systems.

“Sometimes there are only 40 people at Mass, in churches that were built for a thousand people or more,” he warned.  

Likewise, Bishop Lewandowski said that “in 2022, 850 baptisms were celebrated in all the churches in the city and that of those baptisms, 450 were celebrated in Our Lady of Pompei, Sacred Heart of Jesus-Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, St. Patrick and Our Lady of Fatima,” churches that have large numbers of Spanish-speaking parishioners.

The Seek the City leaders called on those present to give a hand and “share the richness of our communities to help others that are falling, that do not have for ministry, that do not have people, those churches that are really well deteriorated and need an infusion of life, of people and young people well converted, well committed, full of faith.”

“The truth is that in our condition now we cannot maintain or sustain what we have; it is impossible,” Bishop Lewandowski said.

During the meeting, parishioners organized themselves into groups for 30 minutes and wrote their comments on a sheet of paper which they then had the opportunity to share publicly. Father Jara collected the written materials ,which will be analyzed by the committee that is carrying out the reconfiguration process.  

Fatima Velazquez, a parish leader at St. Patrick in Fells Point, told the Catholic Review that “it would be good to analyze the parishes individually because we know that the reality of the church in Baltimore is critical, there are many parishes that do not have the parish membership, but especially the Hispanic community at St. Patrick’s, Pompei and St. Clare’s are churches that have a living community.”

“It is a little ambiguous this situation because we know that we as Latinos have our living community, but I don’t know how they are counting us, if we count as a community or we are just a number of Hispanics within the church,” Velazquez said.  

Samuel Somariva and his wife, Rosa Maria, parishioners of Our Lady of Victory in Arbutus, explained that in their parish the representative communities are from India, Burma and several countries of the Asian continent.

“We want our church to remain open and to merge with St. Benedict and with the monastery and to be a mosaic church,” Rosa Maria said. 

Cynthia Mendoza Camacho belongs to the South Baltimore Catholic Community, composed of Our Lady of Good Counsel, St. Mary Star of the Sea and Holy Cross parishes. 

“I understand the difficulties that arise, but each of the church communities have different challenges and the challenge that we have is not the same in other places since we are a community that is growing,” Mendoza Camacho said.

This story was updated May 7 to correct the spelling of Cynthia Mendoza Camacho’s name.

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