In his homily at the Oct. 23, 2022 closing Mass for the year-long bicentennial celebration of St. Peter’s Parish on Capitol Hill, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory noted that the rectory there has a photo taken of members of the parish to mark the 100th anniversary a century earlier. The central figures in that photo, he noted, were clergy and religious.
“Today if we were to take a new photograph of the bicentennial community of St. Peter’s, the laity would be front and center, along with the clergy and religious,” he said. “So much has changed in the past century. One fact is that we now realize in a much more vivid manner that St. Peter’s has thrived because clergy, religious and laity engage one another in a much more collaborative fashion. Respecting our vast differences – cultural, racial, language, age, gender, vocational – we are all very much the same in our heart’s desire to discover Christ and to love Him in our neighbors.”
Then tying together the parish’s past with its present-day outreach, Cardinal Gregory pointed out how “a century ago, many of the parishioners from St. Peter’s also were themselves immigrants – primarily from European nations. A century later, St. Peter’s parishioners currently welcome and care for other new immigrants from Afghanistan and nations from the South.”
The cardinal was referencing how St. Peter’s this summer began opening up its parish hall to offer hospitality and support to an influx of migrants being bused into Washington by the governors of Texas and Arizona. Those migrants have legal status as asylum seekers, with many of them fleeing oppressive governments and dire economic situations in countries including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. At St. Peter’s, parish volunteers have set up the parish hall as a place where the migrants and their children can rest after their long bus rides, and get food, clothing and baby supplies, as representatives of the humanitarian organization SAMU First Response help them become reunited with family members or friends or help them find an initial place to stay and plan for where they will go to seek a place to live and find employment.
St. Peter’s is also one of eight congregations participating in the group Good Neighbors of Capitol Hill that in recent months has been helping to resettle refugees from Afghanistan.
As he concluded his homily, Cardinal Gregory noted how St. Peter’s Church that morning was filled with many faces including the young and the old, but despite their differences, they had come together in faith and would receive Christ in the Eucharist. “We are all very much alike,” he said.
After a joyous Mass that included hymns sung by the parish choir accompanied by a brass ensemble, percussionist and organist, and by the folk group accompanied by guitarists and a pianist, St. Peter’s congregation and the cardinal and concelebrating priests posed together for a group photo, looking up at a photographer in the choir loft.
During the Mass, parishioners recited a special bicentennial prayer, asking God’s blessing as they strive to live out the parish’s mission statement “to be a tangible manifestation of Christ living in the community.”
Father Daniel Carson, St. Peter’s pastor, thanked parishioners who had planned and participated in the bicentennial events, and said, “We’ve had a great 200 years. The next 200 years will be even better.”
St. Peter’s was canonically established in 1820, and its first church was built the following year. Its second church was dedicated in 1890 and rebuilt in its current form after a 1940 fire. St. Peter’s Parish began its yearlong bicentennial celebration in September 2021 with a Mass, followed by an outdoor birthday party at nearby Providence Park. The bicentennial celebration this past year included various religious activities and social gatherings, ranging from a parish rosary to St. Peter’s Day at Nationals Park.
After the Mass closing the bicentennial year celebration, parishioners and priests went downstairs to the parish hall for a reception, coming together in the place where later that week they would be offering hospitality to the arriving migrants. The clothing and other supplies that parishioners had collected for them were temporarily being stored behind the stage. Moments after posing for a parish family portrait in the church, parishioners and priests in the parish hall reflected on what makes St. Peter’s special, offering a parish portrait in words.
Alice Hrdy and her husband David both work for the federal government and have been Capitol Hill residents and St. Peter’s parishioners for 25 years, as they raised their three children.
The St. Peter’s parish hall, she said, “is essentially the community living room, where generations of Catholics and (other) Capitol Hill families have come together in good times and in bad. This is a place where we celebrate, and where we mourn together. After 9/11, we gathered here… We really clung together, because it was such an uncertain and scary time.”
Since his 2019 ordination to the priesthood, Father Brendan Glasgow has served as a parochial vicar at St. Peter’s Parish, and he said he has been “blessed to have this as the community that shaped my priesthood” in his first parish assignment. “It’s a real spectrum of gifts and talents that make up the community,” he said, noting the variety of parishioners who volunteer for its liturgies, ministries, outreach and community activities.
Located just blocks from the U.S. Capitol and near the offices for the House of Representatives, St. Peter’s offers daily Masses where the congregation includes members of Congress, staff members, and workers from the nearby Library of Congress and other federal buildings and agencies.
Father Glasgow said witnessing how some politicians and other public servants begin their days in prayer before doing their work on behalf of the country is a very encouraging thing for him to see as a priest. Sunday Masses at St. Peter’s also feature a mix of people in the congregation, he said. “It doesn’t matter who’s Republican or Democrat, we’re really only there for one reason. It’s our faith in Christ that unites us.”
Several Dominicans who have served at St. Peter’s over the years also concelebrated the Mass, including Dominican Father Damian Day, who was ordained to the priesthood this spring after serving his diaconate year at the parish, assisting with adult education programs, young adult ministry, and with Baptisms there.
Father Damian, who celebrated his first Mass at St. Peter’s, said in his time serving at the parish, “I learned how to meet people where they are and (how) to be able to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them.”
The priest concelebrants at the bicentennial closing Mass also included Father Gary Studniewski, who served as St. Peter’s pastor from 2017 until being named as the pastor of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington. Asked what makes St. Peter’s special, he said, “There are so many young families on Capitol Hill. St. Peter’s attracts them like a magnet.”
He smiled and noted how when he suggested having a cry room in the back of the church for families, parishioners quickly scuttled that idea, preferring to have the sounds of babies and young children at Mass.
St. Peter School also brings young families to the parish, he said. The school, which opened in 1867, was staffed for many decades by the Holy Cross Sisters. St. Peter School was recognized in 2013 and 2019 as a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. In addition to being known for its academic excellence, St. Peter School is also known for its community service to the poor in the Capitol Hill area, and its support for students at St. Peter’s twin parish in Haiti.
Father Studniewski said that in addition to its longtime parishioners, St. Peter’s also has a lot of young adults who are members there. “It’s a real vibrant, alive parish,” he said.
A St. Peter’s parishioner active with the young adult ministry there, Dale Sprusansky, who is 33, said, “I think it’s a place where everyone is able to be themselves and discover their authentic selves.”
Sprusansky, who works as a magazine editor and is originally from Florida, said St. Peter’s young adult group members participate in Bible studies, Eucharistic Adoration, retreats and talks, and take part in outdoor activities together likes hiking at Harper’s Ferry.
Noting how the parish’s young adults seek to deepen and live out their Catholic faith, Sprusansky said, “It (St. Peter’s) is a place where Jesus is the center, and He’s the most important thing.”
Longtime St. Peter’s parishioners, like Ross and Liz Safford, also feel a special bond to the parish.
“We’ve lived on the Hill a long time. We raised three children here,” Liz Safford said.
Both are now retired. Ross Safford worked over the years in government relations for Riggs and PNC banks, and Liz Safford, who sings in the parish choir, worked for National Geographic magazine.
They’ve been members of St. Peter’s Parish for 30 years. Remembering what drew them there, Ross Safford said that the late Father Michael O’Sullivan, St. Peter’s pastor from 1970 until his retirement in 2005, had a sign outside the church with the message, “Catholics can always come home.” And the Saffords did just that, becoming St. Peter’s parishioners.
“This has always been a really strong community,” Liz Safford said.
That sentiment was shared by Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, a St. Peter’s parishioner for the past 27 years who serves as the executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that opposes the death penalty. She and her husband Jay Murphy, who works for the D.C. government, were married at St. Peter’s Church, and their three children were baptized, confirmed and received their First Communions there.
“It’s been a place where at every age and stage of our lives in Washington, we’ve found a place to live out our Catholic values” in a community of faith, she said, noting how as a young couple with children, they were supported and accompanied by older parishioners, and they have tried to do the same, serving in marriage preparation and other ministries there.
She said it was fitting that Cardinal Gregory in his homily tied together the parish’s immigrant roots with its current outreach to migrants. That service, she said, reflects the parish’s mission of reflecting Christ in the community. “That was a visible way for us to do that,” she said, adding that “welcoming strangers is part of our faith… We’re a welcoming parish.”
Patrick Martin along with his wife Beth have been St. Peter’s parishioners for nearly four decades. Patrick Martin, who serves with the parish’s Social Justice Initiatives group, said it was a natural fit for the parish to reach out to the migrants arriving on buses in Washington. He said it was amazing how quickly that outreach came together at the parish. “We knew we could do something,” he said.
After serving as a founder of Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Takoma Park and as the school’s business manager, Patrick Martin is now retired. He sings in St. Peter’s choir. Beth Martin helps out with various activities at the parish, including organizing clothing for the migrant outreach there, cooking casseroles for the Christ House shelter, and selling fair trade coffee that benefits St. Peter’s sister parish in Haiti. Although the couple has lived in Maryland since the mid-1980s, they continue to drive to St. Peter’s for Mass and to volunteer there. “It’s worth the drive,” Patrick Martin said.
The Martins aren’t alone in commuting to St. Peter’s from the Maryland suburbs. Susan DePlatchett, who worked as a teacher and principal in Prince George’s County and then at the University of Maryland’s College of Education, lives in Greenbelt and continues to drive to St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill, where she has been a parishioner for more than 40 years.
“We can’t leave St. Peter’s,” she said. “People think of St. Peter’s as a home. It’s not just their church. It’s a spiritual home.”
