The enduring faith of members of Immaculate Conception Parish since its founding in 1864 in the nation’s capital was celebrated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory at a Mass on Nov. 3. The church located at 1315 8th Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., had a near capacity multi-racial, multi-generational congregation attend the Mass that highlighted the parish’s 160-year-old ministry in what is now the Shaw neighborhood. Members spoke hopefully of the parish’s future in a transitioning city.
Immaculate Conception’s choir director Colleen Daly Eberhardt began singing at the church in 2003, performing Gospel music along with traditional high Latin compositions. The parish’s choir director since 2014 said she travels from Ellicott City weekly because of the human connections at this “gloriously beautiful church. I am proud to be involved in a church where music is valued and so uplifting,” she said. “Unity and diversity is the thing that connects people in this parish. It's the thing that brings people in.”
A composition Eberhardt included in the program was a spiritual by celebrated African American composer Jaqueline Hairston commissioned for the Immaculate Conception choir.
As clergy processed into the church for the anniversary Mass, music by Gustav Holst was performed on an organ as old as the church. The dulcet voices of about a dozen professional and parish singers rang out from the choir loft in the ornate Gothic Revival church that is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Speaking from the theme “What Will Be on Life’s Final Exam?” Cardinal Gregory connected the Gospel reading for the day, Mark 12:28b-34, to the parish’s history and current events.
“The Gospel today tells us in fairly direct terms what will be on life’s final exam,” the cardinal said. “The human heart longs to get to the bottom line, to cut to the chase, to do away with the non-essentials.”
So, when the teacher in the Gospel asks Jesus, “‘Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?’… Jesus’ response is not limited to those who lived during Old Testament times or even in today’s rural and small-town villages,” Cardinal Gregory said. He added that Jesus “speaks to us living in the DMV with our complex urban neighborhoods and suburban communities. He tells us what will be on the final exam. We will be judged on our love of God and our love of neighbor. That will be the whole test…”
In his homily, the cardinal said that Jesus, like a good teacher, “has raised the bar a little higher than many of us would dare to challenge. For 160 years, the Lord has been instructing the people of the Immaculate Conception Parish in D.C. that loving God and your neighbors so completely, so absolutely, so thoroughly is the most important part of our faith.”
Cardinal Gregory said that people “know all too well that such complete devotion to God and to our neighbor remains the most difficult undertaking that we ever will face in life… Jesus just wants us to understand that there are no easy, simple solutions in our journey to God’s kingdom.”
The first Immaculate Conception Church was completed on Oct. 30, 1864 and dedicated by then-Baltimore Archbishop Martin J. Spalding. It was quickly outgrown. The old building continued to be used for church functions as the new structure was developed to serve the city’s growing Irish immigrant population, and later multiple generations of Black D.C. residents and now a diverse array of millennial newcomers living and working in the Shaw neighborhood.
Among the church’s ornate embellishments are stained glass windows and Stations of the Cross that current pastor, Father Charles Gallagher, told the congregation reference the church’s relationship with Irish immigrants and African Americans.
The diversity that has made Immaculate Conception Parish unique reflects both the challenges and triumphs the church and nation are grappling with today.
Kelly Leonard, 31, a high school religion teacher and Shaw resident for three years, said she was drawn to the church by its large young adult community and by the preaching there. “Father Gallagher gives some of the best homilies I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I need that to be fed weekly.”
Dr. Fransisca Castillo, a native of Houston, began attending the church in 2018 while a student at Howard University. The 33-year-old dentist said she keeps returning because of the church’s accessibility and the reverence of Father Gallagher. “The church is always open – for Adoration, Confession, and daily Mass. It doesn’t close,” she said.
Sodality members Angela Jones and Francenia Lilly represent longtime African American worshippers at Immaculate Conception.
“I’ve been with the church since I was born… I feel like this is my family, my life. The church is continuing to grow, and I like that,” said Jones, the secretary for the Sodality there. Her 16-year-old daughter is now an altar server at Immaculate Conception Church.
Lilly, who is 96, has been a parishioner since 1970. Her granddaughter attended the church school and was an altar server.
“It’s a little different now,” she said, “but I think things are going well.”
Much of the difference is influenced by a rapidly gentrifying city that is attracting largely single, high-wage earning millennials who love the walkable community, the social amenities and proximity to downtown. But the growth has brought challenges to the cultural and religious heritage of Immaculate Conception, said Father Gallagher, who became the pastor there in 2019.
The neighborhood “used to be the Harlem of Washington, D.C.,” Father Gallagher said referencing the New York City area that became home and cultural center to hundreds of thousands of African Americans during the great migration from the South to the urban North.
“In many ways it still is. But now it’s a center for clubs, bars, eating and drinking,” he said.
These changes have not been lost on Felix Osuchukwu, 47, and his wife Mona, who attended the celebration with four of their six children: 20-month-old twin boys, Felix III and Chinebu III, and daughters Chioma, 10, and Amarachi, six.
Felix said he was baptized and grew up attending the church. Mona married into it.
“The church has changed tremendously,” said Felix Osuchukwu, who said he is a Eucharistic minister and altar server who has remained with the church through numerous pastors that have served there.
“It is now more young professionals and college students” who attend as older people leave the city, he said, adding that outreach to millennials can bypass many remaining seniors who don’t or can’t access social media and digital channels. He also expressed concern about the need for activities for youth, and that some of the programs that are offered to reach youth or couples have inconvenient times for working parents.
He spoke longingly of when the parish had more intergenerational involvement by African Americans, reminiscing about the children’s choir and a Bible study he attended as a youngster taught by Francenia Lilly that helped youngsters feel like part of the church.
These needs are not unnoticed or unfelt by Father Gallagher, a priest of 14 years, first in St. Mary’s County and suburban parishes, before being moved into urban ministry in 2017 as a chaplain to Catholics at George Washington University and part-time pastor at Immaculate Conception before being named full-time pastor there.
“This experience is forming me to be a pastor after the heart of our Lord Jesus,” he said, emphasizing the need “to understand better the needs of each individual and community. A one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective when you have such a diverse community with such generational, racial, political and cultural diversities.”
Staffing too is an issue, he said, for a church where Mass attendance has grown 81 percent since his arrival – rising from an average of 300 people attending combined Masses each weekend to more than 565.
He is thankful that Father Robert Boxie III, director of the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center at Howard University, is in residence at the parish to help handle a few Masses. They also mentor six seminarians.
Despite staffing challenges and his own lack of multicultural and urban experience, Father Gallagher said he is thankful for the support received from Cardinal Gregory, even as he mused about the many needs he could meet for his community with more assistance.
“I would be grateful for the diocese to appreciate the challenges that my parish and a lot of downtown parishes are facing in a city that is rapidly gentrifying,” he said. “To be honest, I would like to have a permanent deacon to help with marriage programs and other pastoral needs.”
Reflecting on how he approaches his multicultural parish, he said, “I use the image of when a family already has a child and a new child comes. It doesn’t mean that the love for the first child has diminished. We need to be welcoming of everyone who comes through the church doors, to make them feel at home whether they are younger or older, richer or poorer. Sometimes it takes the wisdom of Solomon to thread the needle. Sometimes I don't get it right. These are the challenges of being in the city.”
His trust in his God-given calling and remembering a life-changing encounter he had with Pope John Paul II as a youth helps keep him going, he said. He shared some words with the pope that confirmed that God was calling him to be a priest.
Anthony Brooks, 57, who noted that he has been a parishioner at Immaculate Conception “all my life,” joined his wife Donna in extolling Father Gallagher’s sincerity in trying to meet complex community needs.
“I like this parish, even though the Convention Center took our playground and parking lot,” Brooks said. “It has grown and keeps growing. The younger generation loves ‘Father Charlie,’ that’s what they call him. There are so many ministries for them. They even go to fellowship after Mass. He keeps them engaged. We also have a good group of people running the Men’s Club.”
“Father Gallagher is a good pastor,” his wife Donna said as church members celebrated with the priest at a reception following the anniversary Mass.
