Presiding at the Nov. 26, 2022 blessing of a memorial plaque on a stone marker at the St. Peter Claver Parish cemetery in St. Inigoes, Maryland, honoring the unknown enslaved people buried there, Cardinal Wilton Gregory noted the poignancy of his participation in the service.
As dozens of people of different backgrounds and ages gathered around him to join in the prayer service at the parish first established as a mission in the early 1900s for Black Catholics in that region who had experienced segregation at a nearby Catholic church, Cardinal Gregory said, “I can’t help but think that the many people buried here without a marker had to wait for an African American cardinal to bless” that memorial honoring them.
The inscription on the bronze plaque read: “Dedicated to the memory of those unknown who were enslaved and buried in the Archdiocese of Washington.” The top of the plaque had an image of Christ crucified on the cross, and the bottom included a quotation from Wisdom 3:1: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.”
Cardinal Gregory, the archbishop of Washington who was named as a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2020, becoming the first African American cardinal, read the prayers of blessing in an emotional voice as the people around him bowed their heads in prayer while standing on the grounds of that parish in rural Southern Maryland.
“Brothers and sisters in Christ, a common Christian concern has brought us together to bless this memorial stone, which will mark the places in which the bodies of those who suffered the pain and injustice of slavery lie at rest, awaiting the dawn of the Lord’s coming in glory… May this stone be a sign of comfort to the living descendants of those buried here, and a sign of their hope for unending life for their ancestors,” the cardinal prayed before sprinkling the marker with holy water.
Afterward, Cardinal Gregory told the Catholic Standard, “It was terribly emotional to be able to stand here and bless these graves of former slaves. It put me in touch with my own roots.”
The cardinal, who was appointed as the archbishop of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington in 2019, added, “What I’ve discovered here in the archdiocese, especially in Southern Maryland, is that the faith that sustained these people was the same strength of faith that sustained the early Christians, because they were suffering. It’s the same strength of faith that is present here that was present then.”
Before the blessing of the memorial marker at the parish cemetery, Cardinal Gregory celebrated a Mass at St. Peter Claver Church, which featured joyful singing led by the St. Peter Claver Gospel Choir.
As the Mass began, the cardinal called it a “momentous occasion where we honor the legacy of those enslaved buried in the cemetery. We come together as God’s people, God’s children.”
St. Peter Claver Parish is named for the 17th century Spanish Jesuit priest known for his missionary work evangelizing thousands of enslaved Africans in South America. Cardinal Gregory noted that he had celebrated Mass in Cartagena, Colombia, at the church’s altar located above that saint’s remains.
Concelebrating the Mass at St. Peter Claver Church were the pastors of two other St. Mary’s County parishes, Father David Beaubien, the pastor of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parish in Leonardtown, and Father Peter Giovanoni, the pastor of nearby St. Michael’s Parish in Ridge. Father Larry Swink, the pastor of St. Peter Claver who was recuperating from surgery that he had earlier that week, was unable to participate in the Mass.
In 2018 during a Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, then the archbishop of Washington, had blessed the first commemorative bronze plaques honoring unknown enslaved men, women and children buried in cemeteries in the Archdiocese of Washington. Cardinal Wuerl said then that the time had come “to right a wrong” and to remember and honor those people.
That spring, those memorial plaques were placed in the archdiocese’s five major cemeteries: Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington; St. Mary’s Queen of Peace Cemetery in Helen in St. Mary’s County; Resurrection Cemetery in Clinton in Prince George’s County; and in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Silver Spring and All Souls Cemetery in Germantown, both in Montgomery County. The archdiocese includes Washington, D.C., and the five surrounding Maryland counties.
In 2017, Georgetown University held a prayer service to express public contrition over the Maryland Society of Jesus’s 1838 sale of 272 enslaved women, children and men to benefit the university, which was then in financial difficulty. The Jesuits at that time had enslaved workers at the religious order’s plantations in Maryland who received sacraments as Catholics, and kept that faith when some family members were separated after the sale and moved to plantations in Louisiana. For generations, descendants of those families in Maryland and Louisiana have remained Catholic through periods of slavery, segregation and ongoing racism in society and the Church.
In an email to the Catholic Standard, Lilliam L. Machado, the president and CEO of the archdiocese’s Catholic Cemeteries, said files indicate that in 2018, 24 parishes requested that memorial for their cemeteries.
Reflecting on the importance of those memorial markers, Machado added, “Many older parish cemeteries of the Archdiocese have formerly enslaved persons buried in them. The graves of these brothers and sisters in Christ are largely unmarked. Memorial markers like the one installed today remind us of their notable presence and sacred destiny, allowing parishioners to reflect on the contributions enslaved persons made to their community and nation despite their great suffering. Memorials are powerful reminders of the past. While they sometimes shine the light of Christ on the sins of mankind, that light always illuminates a path toward necessary dialogue and healing.”
In his homily at the Mass at St. Peter Claver Church, Cardinal Gregory said, “There are literally thousands of people who rest unidentified in our cemeteries who were slaves and whose identity and names were considered inconsequential and unimportant to record. They may be nameless in local history, but not before God.”
The congregation responded “Amen” to that statement.
The cardinal noted that those unnamed enslaved persons interred at St. Peter Claver’s cemetery would be honored with the memorial marker’s blessing after Mass, when they would pray that those once held in bondage would be “forever united in that freedom which we all long for and as God promised to all of His children.”
Cardinal Gregory in his homily said they would “also pray for those who today are held in the bondage of hatred and contempt for those who may be from another culture, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Those dreadful human sentiments are as binding and as confining as were the physical chains once used from an earlier era.”
Concluding his remarks, the cardinal said that on a day when they would bless a monument honoring the enslaved persons buried in the parish cemetery, “we also beg freedom from any hatred that constricts the human heart and soul today, so that in time, we might all be free as God’s children were always destined to be.”
And Cardinal Gregory added, “The people that we honor today in St. Peter Claver’s cemetery are nameless, but in God’s kingdom, they have a name.”
The congregation responded with a loud “Amen!” and applauded those words.
After the Mass, people walked with the cardinal in a procession to the parish cemetery for the blessing of the memorial marker. Processing with the parishioners and guests were an honor guard of the Knights of St. John and members of the Knights of St. Jerome.
Some people lingered at the cemetery afterward, to stop and pray at the memorial marker and to walk among the graves there where their family members and longtime parishioners were buried.
Bill Merritt, a St. Peter Claver parishioner for 23 years and a Knight of St. Jerome there, said the memorial marker was “much needed,” and he appreciated the cardinal’s message in his homily. “We have to put away the hatred and love each other,” he said.
He showed a photo on his cell phone of the tombstone of his great-great-great grandmother named Narcissus, who lived from 1827-1887. He noted that through DNA testing, he found out about her, that she was enslaved and sold to a plantation in North Carolina, and had a daughter born into slavery.
Reflecting on the enslaved people honored that day, Merritt said, “They’re the ancestors of this area. We need to keep remembering, because remembering keeps us faithful to where we should be. We have to have history to keep on the path God wants us on.”
After the blessing at the cemetery, parishioners and guests gathered for lunch at McKenna Hall, named after Jesuit Father Horace McKenna, a priest who worked for racial justice when he served in Southern Maryland, and later in Washington helped found many outreach programs for the poor, including the So Others Might Eat (SOME) soup kitchen.
A large photo on the wall of McKenna Hall shows hundreds of local African Americans celebrating the 1924 dedication of the Cardinal Gibbons Institute, which another noted Jesuit priest, Father John LaFarge, started as an agricultural school at a time when there were no educational opportunities for that area’s Black residents. That program closed during the Depression in 1933. McKenna Hall is located in the building which housed St. Peter Claver School that educated generations of African American children in the parish before it closed in the 1960s.
In recent years, St. Peter Claver parishioners including Steve Hawkins and Claudette Bennett have worked to preserve the parish’s history and the story of how it served that region’s Black Catholics through the years, and they are working on opening a museum there to share that story.
Steve Hawkins praised the legacy of those unknown enslaved people buried in the parish’s cemetery, and the legacy of generations of St. Peter Claver’s parishioners that followed them.
“They never gave up. The ancestors never gave up through all of that,” said Hawkins, a St. Peter Claver parishioner since he got married there in 1988 who is now retired and owns an information technology company that does government contracting.
Claudette Bennett, a lifelong St. Peter Claver parishioner who retired after working as a program analyst for the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, has been volunteering as an archivist for the parish’s planned museum. “My part is to tell that story,” she said.
Asked about her reaction to the memorial for the enslaved buried in the parish cemetery, Bennett said, “I’m happy for us, and I’m happy for them.”
She said today’s parishioners stand on the shoulders of their ancestors. “I know they had great faith in God and great faith in being Catholic. But they also had great faith in being African American,” Bennett said.
The blessing of the memorial marker was especially meaningful to Henrietta Pike, who noted that her great-great grandmother Louisa Mahoney was among the 272 men, women and children sold by the Maryland Society of Jesus to Southern plantation owners in 1838, “but she hid in the woods and stayed behind.” One of the Jesuit priests had warned some of the enslaved people about the sale, so some were able to avoid being transported from Maryland.
Louisa Mahoney, born in 1812 at the Jesuits’ St. Inigoes plantation in Maryland, later married Alex Mason, and they had six children together. After emancipation, Louisa Mason continued faithfully attending church and worked for many years as a domestic at the Jesuits’ residence. When she died in 1909 at the age of 96, an obituary in a Southern Maryland newspaper praised her as a well-respected member of the community.
Henrietta Pike, interviewed at the reception following the blessing of the memorial marker, said, “These are our ancestors. We’re finally acknowledging them. We thank them for their hard work and sacrifice, and I am thankful for their faith.”
Now a member of Our Lady Help of Christians Parish in Waldorf, Pike works as a nursing supervisor at United Medical Center in Washington. She noted that as she has come to learn about her ancestry, she now understands “why my family was so Catholic.”
She grew up as a member of Assumption Parish in Washington, attending Catholic grade school and high school and then The Catholic University of America, where she met her husband. They have four children, “and we’ve tried to bring them up in the faith,” Pike added.
At the St. Peter Claver Cemetery, Pike visited the graves of her great-grandfather Daniel Oliver Barnes, who she said was one of the first parochial school teachers in St. Mary’s County, and her great-grandmother Josephine Mason Barnes, who was the daughter of Louisa Mahoney Mason. “It got me teary-eyed,” she said.
Reflecting on her great-great grandmother, Pike said, “Thank goodness she hid in the woods. That’s why I’m here in Maryland.” She added, “I still feel connected to her.”
Also attending the reception were two sisters and lifelong St. Peter Claver parishioners, Shirley Briscoe Dickerson, 83, and Mary Catherine Allen, 80.
“It was very inspiring, because my family is down there (in the cemetery),” Dickerson said.
Allen added, “It meant a lot that someone finally recognized St. Peter Claver and the ancestors.”
Dr. Francine Hawkins, the wife of Steve Hawkins, serves as the parish secretary and sings in the St. Peter Claver Gospel Choir. She said the day marked a coming together for people “who came to acknowledge and honor our ancestors.”
She said it was very meaningful for them to have Cardinal Gregory preside at the Mass and blessing of the memorial marker. “I saw it as a gift of the Holy Spirit,” she said.
Dr. Hawkins, who is a professional development specialist and has a doctorate in speech language pathology, said, “What we saw today should be a stepping stone into the future.”
She noted that she was born and raised there, and has been a lifelong St. Peter Claver parishioner, as were her parents, her grandparents and her great-grandparents.
The memorial marker to the unknown enslaved people buried at St. Peter Claver cemetery “is just connecting us even further back,” she said. “It gives us a sense of identity and who we are. We already know Whose we are. We are grounded in our faith.”
Dr. Hawkins added, “That memorial now becomes a legacy for our future generations. I have a granddaughter, and I can’t wait to take her out there and tell her about my heritage, and hers.”
