Father John Lavin, pioneering leader in Hispanic ministry, dies at 80

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Redemptorist Father John P. Lavin, a pioneering leader in Hispanic ministry within the Archdiocese of Baltimore and a former pastor of the Catholic Community of St. Michael and St. Patrick in Fells Point, died Feb. 12 at Stella Maris in Timonium. He was 80.

The Boston native arrived in Baltimore in 1992 to shepherd St. Michael at the corner of Wolfe and Lombard streets as it transitioned into the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s first bilingual faith community. St. Patrick on Broadway would join with St. Michael in 1995 as a “twinned” parish under Father Lavin’s pastorship.

“He was very involved in helping Hispanics become a part of all the functions of the parish,” remembered Estella Chavez, a Cuban immigrant who served as a pastoral council member and cantor at St. Michael. “He made the parish council bilingual and he did it without excluding anyone. He was a pastor to everyone – English-speaking and Spanish-speaking alike.”

Chavez said Father Lavin saw music ministry as a way of uniting the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking members of the parish, helping the two communities come together for major liturgies such as the Easter Vigil.

Within the archdiocese, Father Lavin supported the growth of the Office of Hispanic Ministry. He was a leading voice calling for the just treatment of newly arrived immigrants and for reform of the federal immigration system. He also supported a moratorium on arresting immigrants at the workplace and stronger penalties for employers who commit human rights violations.

In his book, “Noticing Lazarus at Our Door,” Father Lavin raised awareness about the millions of Hispanic immigrants who live in the country ignored, neglected or forgotten.

“Instead of building a wall to block out Hispanics, we need to build bridges of communication between Latinos and the larger society in the United States,” he said in a 2008 interview with the Catholic Review.

The priest recalled in his book that three young men at St. Michael once complained to him that a parishioner had hired them and not paid them after three weeks.

“They pointed the man out to me,” he said. “When I called him over, he immediately took out a checkbook and paid them.”

Father Lavin left the Catholic Community of St. Michael and St. Patrick in 1999 to serve as a missionary to Hispanics at St. Mary in Annapolis, where he was also involved in respect life work and the Retrouvaille ministry focused on helping troubled marriages. As he had done in Baltimore, Father Lavin encouraged the growth of “small Christian communities,” forming faith-sharing groups that met in the homes of Spanish-speaking and English-speaking parishioners.

“He really laid the foundation for Hispanic ministry at St. Mary’s,” said Redemptorist Father Patrick Woods, current pastor and a former provincial leader of the Redemptorists. “We now have 1,500 people coming to our two Masses in Spanish.”

The son of a Spanish teacher in the Boston public school system, Father Lavin was ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1966 in New York. Early in his ministry, he served in Puerto Rico and his native Boston before ministering in Spanish Harlem in New York and giving preaching missions to the Spanish-speaking community throughout the United States from 1987 to 1992. After leaving Annapolis in 2008, he ministered again in Boston before declining health required him to transfer to St. John Neumann Residence at Stella Maris in 2018.

Father Lavin was known for his devotion to his hometown Red Sox and for his good sense of humor. In a 2008 interview with the Catholic Review, that humor was on display when he recounted how an exact replica of a famous Guatemalan crucifix in Esquipulas was held up by federal agents at the customs office on its journey to be housed at St. Patrick.

“It was kind of ironic,” Father Lavin told the Review. “Jesus was undergoing the same experience of many immigrants. He eventually was released.”

A wake will be held Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. A funeral Mass will be offered Feb. 21 at 10 a.m., also at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Email George Matysek at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org

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