‘Blessing bags’ a focal point for merged St. Casimir Parish during pandemic

Feeding the hungry has become a rallying point for a faith community completing a period of transition.

St. Casimir Parish formally extended its identity New Year’s Day, when a canonical and civil merger with St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Highlandtown and the former St. Brigid went into effect. The parish will be known as St. Casimir at Canton and Patterson Park, the latter being the extended front yard of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

Both St. Casimir and St. Elizabeth are active on the feeding front, efforts which draw substantial support from elsewhere in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The latter’s food pantry has been in existence for generations; the former’s burgeoning mission to provide bag lunches to a soup kitchen in Fells Point is a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Every Tuesday morning, a team of volunteers in front of St. Casimir Church collects bagged lunches – its commitment has grown to providing 600, but it typically gathers more than 1,000 – and transports them to Beans and Bread, the signature program of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore.

“At first, I thought we would be asking for 10 families to make lunches,” said Conventual Franciscan Father Dennis Grumsey, pastor of St. Casimir Parish. “Then we added a notice in the bulletin, and it blossomed into something much bigger.”

Pam Protani, who was among the St. Casimir volunteers at Beans and Bread on the first Saturday of the month before social distancing guidelines forced soup kitchens to shift to “grab-and-go” meal distribution, coordinates an effort which ranges from assembly lines in the Hamilton kitchen of her 91-year-old mother, Elsie, to parishioners from St. Ursula in Parkville and Sacred Heart of Glyndon.

They pack brown bags with a meatdedand- cheese sandwich; fruit cup or pudding; a piece of fresh fruit; something

sweet and a crunchy snack. Last June, a note of encouragement was added to that checklist. That led one guest of Beans and Bread to describe them as “Blessing Bags,” and created a run on colored markers for one segment of the parish community.

Some of the lunch donations come from family vehicles dropping off children across South Kenwood Avenue from the church, at St. Casimir School.

“One of the nice things about the project is that it involves our school kids,” Father Grumsey said. “With all the (COVID-19) restrictions, parents were struggling to find activities for them. They’re (among) the ones who write messages on the bags.”

St. Casimir School, one of the few parish schools remaining in the city, is a success story unto itself.

It did not lose a single member of its staff last summer, when schools set about preparing for in-class instruction in addition to the remote learning that was required by COVID-19 last March. Approximately 190 of its 225 students are physically in the school every day. It is at capacity, and every grade before middle school has a waiting list, according to Noreen Heffner, the principal since 2010.

She arrived the same year Father Grumsey became pastor. While only 25 percent of the students are from families registered in the parish, more than 75 percent are Catholic. That ratio is rising, as Heffner counted at least 15 students who were baptized into the Catholic faith over the last five years.

“Father Dennis has baptized them at school Masses; it’s wonderful,” Heffner said, of twice-a-month liturgies. “We are always thinking, how are we going to get our Catholic identity into everything we do?”

At St. Elizabeth of Hungary, meanwhile, the food pantry set up in the rectory basement continues to distribute to those in need every Tuesday and Friday. It is reliant upon support from the Maryland Food Bank and St. John the Evangelist, Long Green Valley in Hydes, which once a month sends a caravan of three to four vehicles filled with food collected at the parish to St. Elizabeth.

“We’re so appreciative of St. John the Evange-list,” said Patrick Hutson, a lifelong parishioner who inherited organizing the pantry from Lucy DiPinto, who ran it for decades. “Look, this is what St. Elizabeth (of Hungary) did. She fed the hungry.”

On the merger front, according to the archdiocese, the parish sacramental books for St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Brigid are closed, and all sacramental books will be maintained at St. Casimir.

In 2017 the three were combined as a pastorate in the pilot phase of the archdiocese’s pastoral planning process.

The final liturgy at St. Brigid was held in February 2019, when the worship site was closed. The St. Brigid property at South Ellwood Avenue and Hudson Street is being readied for sale.

St. Casimir holds four weekend liturgies (Saturday at 5 p.m., Sunday at 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.), while St. Elizabeth has Sunday Mass at 11:15 a.m.

Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org

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