Never too old: Seniors over 90 welcomed into Catholic faith at Easter

Kenneth “Ken” Davis, 90, started attending Sunday Mass at the Oak Crest Catholic Community five years ago with his best friend, Phylis Welsh, 80, also a resident of the senior living community in Parkville.

As Davis watched Catholics reverently receiving Communion, the lifelong Protestant wanted the same thing. He began joining the Communion line with his arms crossed to receive a blessing, longing for the day he could receive the body of Christ.

After a period of instruction in the faith and guided by Kathy Schmitt, pastoral administrator at Oak Crest, Davis was received into the Catholic Church earlier this year, receiving his first Communion Feb. 26 at the senior facility’s chapel.

During the April 16 Easter Vigil Mass, he made his confirmation in the same chapel, taking the name “Joseph Philip” after his father and sponsor, Welsh, respectively.

“Receiving the body of Christ was just so peaceful,” Davis said, recalling his first Communion. “I mean, it was just like the culmination of years coming to be able to do that.”

Davis was among nearly 500 people who came into full communion with the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Baltimore this Easter season. Some, like him, had waited nearly a century before taking the big step. 

June Vantz, 93, will be received into the Catholic Church May 8 at St. Ann in Hagerstown, where she will receive the sacraments of Eucharist and confirmation. Like Davis, she was motivated to join the Catholic faith by a fellow resident at her senior living facility, Seaton in Hagerstown.

When Bill Reynolds, a parishioner of St. Ann’s in Hagerstown, saw Vantz’s interest in converting to Catholicism, he encouraged her to contact St. Ann parish.

Monsignor J. Bruce Jarboe, pastor of St. Ann, and Amy Rohan, director of faith formation at St. Ann, paid a pastoral visit to Vantz at the senior facility in February.

Ever since, Rohan has visited Vantz to share beliefs, teachings and practices of the faith in order to prepare her to enter the Catholic Church.  

Although Protestant, Vantz raised her children in the Catholic faith because her husband was Catholic. When her daughter became ill and died, Vantz felt closer to her children through their faith and found comfort in it.

“I decided I would convert to Catholicism because I belonged with them,” she said.

Among the most attractive aspects of Catholicism for Vantz have been the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of reconciliation, and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

“I feel wonderful,” she said. “I feel like I can finally come home.”

Davis at Oak Crest said that throughout his life, he witnessed and admired the devotion of his Catholic friends to their faith as they attended Mass and went to confession regularly.

Accompanying Welsh, a former religious sister, to volunteer in hospice ministry at the Stella Maris nursing home facility in Timonium was another spiritual awakening.

“There was a man in the process of dying who had not spoken anything for a week,” he said. “Phylis came in and said the rosary. Suddenly, the man put his hands up and started moving his mouth.”

After reading books, discussing faith with several devoted Catholics and watching an EWTN series called “Catholics Come Home,” Catholicism “made sense” to Davis.

“I began to see various things in the Catholic Church meaningful to me that I didn’t pay much attention to most of my life,” he said.

That included acknowledging Mary as Mother of God, pro-life advocacy, obedience to the pope and the absolution of sins through the sacrament of reconciliation.

Monsignor Jarboe noted that opportunities for evangelization can happen anywhere by anyone. That’s evident in his parish’s outreach to Vantz, the soon-to-be Catholic nonagenarian.

“It is never too late to grow and develop closer to the Lord and to the church in living a spiritual life,” he said. “June, with her advanced years, is a wonderful example of that for all of us.”

Email Priscila González de Doran at pdoran@CatholicReview.org

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