The parishioner was letting Father Evan Ponton have it, face-to-face; more like a tirade in a saloon than a church. The doors would soon be closing on a beloved Baltimore parish โ the Shrine of the Little Flower at Belair Road and Brendan Avenue since 1926 – and the man was livid.
The confrontation occurred after the Archdiocese announced in late May that the number of parishes in and near Baltimore City would be cut from 61 to 23. The Shrine was on the list โ along with five others in the once nearly monolithically Catholic northeast quadrant of the city.
A farewell Mass was said Sunday, October 13, and the 900 capacity sanctuary was packed for the first time since the 2021 retirement Mass for longtime pastor, the Rev. Michael J. Orchik.
Named for St. Therese of Lisieux [1873-1897], a French nun who died of tuberculosis, one of the most popular saints in the history of the Church. In her writings, she referred to herself as “the little flower of Jesus in the garden of God.”
You can’t keep it going
“The Shrine” was once among the largest parishes โ if not the largest โ in the city with more than 12,000 members in the 1960s. Overflow seating in the basement was necessary on any given Sunday from the 1950s through the 1970s. During that time, enrollment in the parish school exceeded 2,000 students. The school closed in 2005.
In recent years, a typical weekend โ Masses on Saturday evening and Sunday morning โ drew about 60.
“And many of those are coming in from the county” to worship at their childhood parish, said Father Ponton, 35, associate pastor. “You can’t keep a place this big going with 60 people.”
Of his encounter with the furious man, Father Ponton said: “We were lining up at the back of the church to begin Mass. I noticed an agitated person being disruptive and asked if I could assist with anything.
“He told me, ‘You donโt know anything and you donโt care. Youโre just a hired hand to do the bishopโs bidding,'” most likely referring to Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, who has overseen the closing process.
The layman then tossed a stack of bulletins across the floor as the opening hymn began. Though Father Ponton understood the man’s feelings โ sadness and anger leavened by moments of acceptance had settled over the congregation โ the cleric took offense at being called a “hired hand.”
“That phrase is hurtful to priests,” said Father Ponton. “It immediately calls to mind a passage from the gospel very close to a priestโs heart where Jesus contrasts the Good Shepherd who knows his flock by name and leads and feeds and lays down his life [for them] in perilous times. The hired hand runs away and abandons the flock.”
The insult was particularly onerous to Father Ponton. A year-and-a-half ago, in the thick of Archdiocese “listening sessions” to determine if any churches might be spared (a few were), he left a flourishing Catholic community in Anne Arundel County.
There, he was assigned to St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park โ which celebrates Mass for some 2,000 people each weekend โ and was the chaplain at Archbishop Spalding High School.
More than 800 for a final Mass
Just a few years out of seminary, he wanted to minister in the city โ the first archdiocese in the United States, established in 1789 โ a town once so indelibly Catholic that many parochial school kids grew up thinking everyone was Catholic.
“Unless they were public,” said Donna Mislak, a 1972 graduate of the Shrine school, using a phrase Catholic kids once used for their peers in public school. Mislak’s German-American mother’s family began at the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown, which has been revived by a wave of Latino immigration in southeast Baltimore. Her family now belongs to Our Lady of Grace in Parkton.
On Sunday, Mislak returned to the Shrine โ along with more than more than 800 others โ for the farewell Mass where she grew up in the 1960s. She hadn’t been back in more than a decade. The church remains beautiful, she said, though the surrounding neighborhood has not fared as well.
“It was fabulous but overwhelming. I cried,” she said. “It was like the end of my childhood when I walked to school there in my little brown uniform and beanie. I felt like I’d lost my parents all over again.”
That’s the kind of heartache, Father Ponton said, he’s been working with since the announcement was made.
“Sometimes I feel myself doing parish-wide grief ministry,” said Father Ponton, a bass player who admires Stanley Clarke. “Seeing [the resentment] through the lens of grief helps my own emotional health.
“My goal in coming here was not to fix the city or fix parishes or people but just have solidarity and empathy with them in a time of profound loss,” he said. “As Christians we are not people who grieve without hope. This is where we are. Can we do what we need to do to move forward?”
The man who threw the church bulletins across the floor has not apologized, said Father Ponton, but others who had harsh words with him have.
The other churches closing in Northeast Baltimore are Saint Francis of Assisi, less than a mile away from the Shrine, its school remaining open; St. Anthony of Padua, two miles away on Frankford Avenue; St. Dominic on Harford Road, once the anchor of Hamilton, two-and-a-half miles away; Most Precious Blood, two miles away near Moravia Road; and Blessed Sacrament in the Pen Lucy neighborhood on Old York Road, about three miles away.
All will be merged with St. Matthew at 5401 Loch Raven Boulevard, one of the most vibrant and progressive parishes in the city, a place, say those who did not feel welcome in more conservative Catholic communities, that has become their spiritual home. Father Ponton will serve at St. Matthews at least until the mergers are sorted out.
Demographics led to decline
Why are so many parishes going dark within three miles of one another?
The area once boomed with tens of thousands of Catholics moving away from their original neighborhoods in southeast Baltimore, from Little Italy to the edge of Dundalk. Those moves to what was still farmland in the early 20th century commenced an era of different Catholic ethnic groups โ German, Irish, Italian and Polish โ worshiping together as they did not in the more segregated parishes of their youth.
As the faithful continued to leave the city for the suburbs and beyond, the churches they left behind boomed no more. In the 21st century, it’s been reported that the average American family moves up to ten times. In the old days, a neighborhood rowhouse would remain in a family for three generations, sometimes more.
Joseph M. Martenczuk, 43, coordinated music and liturgy at the Shrine, a place he loves dearly.
“I grew up in Little Flower,” he said, describing the parish as a neighborhood, once the way that Realtors described Baltimore communities in classified ads: Two story brick rowhouse in Saint Ursula; single home with big yard, St. Mary’s Govans and the like.
“My family came out of Holy Rosary and moved to Chesterfield Avenue in the 1940s when it was farmland,” said Martenczuk.
Holy Rosary near Patterson Park where former Pope John Paul II [1920-2005] celebrated Mass in 1976 when he was Cardinal Karol Wojtyลa. The Fells Point/Canton waterfront was so heavily Polish through the late 19th century and most of the 20th that three Catholic churches were built to serve them: Holy Rosary, St. Casimir at O’Donnell Street and Lakewood Avenue and Saint Stanislaus close enough to Thames Street to hear the tugboat whistles.
St. Casimir will continue, the fate of Holy Rosary is undecided at the moment and St. Stan’s, closed a quarter-century ago, is now a yoga studio.
“A lot of people are hurt and grieving at Little Flower and I’m praying they find their way,” said Martenczuk. “I’m sure we’ll all find other homes โฆ”
The first insallment in “A City to Come,” Rafael Alvarez’s series of the impacts of church closings in Baltimore, can be found here.
Rafael Alvarez was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith at St. Clement in Lansdowne in 1958. He graduated Mount Saint Joseph High School in 1976 and Loyola College of Baltimore in 1980. Has your parish been closed? Email Alvarez and tell him about it: orlo.leini@gmail.com
Good riddance.
The grand Shrine of the Little Flower was the melting pot for many Catholics whose families settled along Herring Run Park after World War II. Those of us who attended and worshipped have fond memories of the Little Flower Junior Athletic Association, the Shrine Film Festival organized by the brilliant Rev. George Restrepo, S.J., and the many candy sales that paid the school’s bills. As homeownership in this corridor of northeast Baltimore declined starting in the 1980’s, we witnessed the arrival of pawnshops, bail bonds, and check cashing enterprises taking over many Belair Road storefronts. Over 31 years ago Sav-on Food, the neighborhood supermarket, exploded in an inferno— we could smell smoke for years after that.
I will pray that the people find a church home and keep the faith no matter what. These are the times where the world don’t want god people to worship him In unity. May god keep us near the cross and to fellowship in glorify his name. Also no one considered the community schools to come and teach the kids about the love of God. Especially how the neighborhood has increased on crime and poverty. There are other ways not to close a church but make it useful to the community.
Maybe they would be able to keep some of these churches open if the Catholic church hadn’t spent over 3 BILLION dollars in legal fees defending Priest sexual abuse! Priorities are questionable.
Well said! Doesnโt the Archdiocese of Baltimore declaration of bankruptcy have something to do with all the churchโs being closed? Maybe I missed that in this article. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is not broke, they are circling their wagons and preparing for a siege by people who were sexually abused at Catholic Churches and Schools that are under the Archdiocese of Baltimoreโs oversight.
Baltimore is the home of Roman Catholicism in America and for the Archdiocese of Baltimore to declare bankruptcy is profound.
But rather than admitting there is a terrible evil that needs to be purged from the Roman Catholic Church the Archdiocese of Baltimore has come up with a clever slogan for those worshippers who are not fully aware of what is behind the bankruptcy. The slogan is โSeek The Cityโ
Itโs little vague but fits right in with a whole lot of the vagueness in Catholic doctrine that allows a lot of leeway and side stepping when something like large scale sexual abuse and a then a coverup by the Catholic Church is exposed.
A good place to start on the strange and scary story of why the Archdiocese of Baltimore had to declare bankruptcy is by watching โThe Keepersโ on Netflix.
Just a few things:
* The teacher and nun who died in “The Keepers” was working in the Baltimore City Schools at the time she died. Yet documentary ignores this detail and wants to make it seem like this is just some Roman Catholic thing. It isn’t. There’s plenty of abuse in the rest of society and to focus on cases in the church lets these parts off the hook.
The reality is that the government can’t begin to confront the abuse in its own ranks because the cost of any settlement would be many orders higher in size. The school system could not function.
* The reality is that the current system of bankruptcy isn’t working. The moneys won’t be paid by the guilty. They’ll be paid by the average folks who see their institutions destroyed.
I am a Catholic, in a church that was fortunate enough not to be on the list for closure. Everyone is upset with what is happening to the churches. As for me, it comes down to white flight, crime and sexual abuse in the church. I watched as the services at The Shrine of the Little Flower was shown on the news, the service was packed. I understand the need to be there, I too, plan to attend my home church last service. As families moved out of the city to surrounding countries the churches suffered,most of the population in the city is black and non catholic, while they often seek help from the church they have no allegiance to the churches and don’t attend. No church can expect to survive non practicing parishioners, no support from former members,sexual scandals and deteriorating buildings. I feel bad for all closing parishes and those who are suffering the loss,but let’s be fair, where was all of this support before? Memories are hard to compete with but, if folks felt so strongly, maybe showing up now and then would’ve been nice to show the old Parrishes that they still mattered and was revelant to them. This is my personal opinion.