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February 17, 2008

Old St. Mary’s: 175 years strongParish continues to reinvent itself to meet changing needs

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

In April 1833, Chicago wasn’t much more than a small frontier settlement, a collection of houses and commercial buildings surrounding Fort Dearborn. It was not yet a town, let alone a city.

But it housed enough Catholics to petition Bishop Joseph Rosati of the Diocese of St. Louis for a priest to start a parish.

“We, the Catholics of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, lay before you the necessity there exists to have a pastor in the new and flourishing city. We count about 100 Catholics in this town. We will not cease to pray until you have taken our important request into consideration,” their petition said.

St. Mary of the Assumption was born May 5, 1833, when Father John Mary Ireneaus St. Cyr arrived and celebrated the first Mass in a log building near the Sauganash Tavern, where he was staying. Shortly thereafter, a log building was built at State and Lake streets for worship.

Chicago first incorporated as a town, with 350 people, about three months after St. Cyr arrived. By the time Chicago became a city on March 4, 1837, the population had grown to 4,170.

That marked the beginning of the somewhat nomadic history of Chicago’s oldest parish, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. Its gala dinner was set for Feb. 16 at the Union League Club. The parish, housed in one of the newest church buildings in the archdiocese at 1500 S. Michigan Ave., is once again riding a wave of growth, with 25 percent more people attending weekend Masses in October 2007 than two years previously.

Paulist Father Michael Kallock, the pastor, said he has registered an average of nine new parishioners a week since Sept. 28.

That rate would have seemed slow to St. Cyr, who saw his parish grow to about 2,000 Catholics before he was recalled to St. Louis in 1837. By that time, Chicago was part of the newly formed Diocese of Vincennes, Ind., and a new pastor, Father Timothy O’Meara, was sent from there.

Building on the move

The building was moved to the northwest corner of Madison Street and Michigan Avenue. By 1843, the third pastor, Father Maurice de St. Palais, built a bigger church on the southwest corner of the intersection. The next year, the parish — still the only one in the city of Chicago, although a handful had sprung up in outlying areas — became the cathedral of the newly created Diocese of Chicago, led by Bishop James Quarter.

It served as the cathedral until after the Great Fire of 1871, when Holy Name Cathedral was being built. After the fire, it moved to the former Plymouth Congregational Church at 9th Street and Wabash Avenue — and, no longer the cathedral, became known as Old St. Mary’s.

The parish, which had housed the first Catholic schools in Chicago (for girls and for boys) closed its parish school in about 1880. It would not have another school until 2004.

But the 1880s saw more changes. Father Augustus Tolton, the first African-American priest, began celebrating Mass for black Catholics in the basement, before being given St. Monica Parish on the South Side.

As its South Loop location became more and more commercial, Archbishop James Quigley called it “the church of the stranger,” serving workers and travelers passing through rather than the usual stable base of parishioners.

Paulists take charge

That fit with the mission of the Paulist Fathers, a New York-based congregation founded in 1858 to evangelize North America, and in 1903 Archbishop Quigley invited the Paulists to take charge of Old St. Mary’s.

According to the Aug. 26, 1905 New World, the Paulists renewed the parish, with an emphasis on social service, including an active St. Vincent de Paul society, a day nursery for children whose mothers worked outside the home, a home for “helpless boys” and a club for working boys who did have homes but were “deprived of religious influence.” The Paulists also started the Paulist Choir in 1904, which in its day was known as the “world’s greatest choir of boys and men.” The choir was led by Paulist Father Eugene O’Malley from 1928 until it was disbanded in 1967.

In 1931, the parish began offering the first outreach to Filipino Catholics in the archdiocese, and in 1954 opened a chapel at Wabash Avenue and Van Buren Street. By 1971, with the old church in poor condition, the parish moved to the chapel, and the 9th Street church was demolished, despite its landmark status.

That was the church Kathryn Morey came to know when she moved into the Dearborn Park development in 1981 and joined the parish.

“It was the parish without parishioners,” Morey said. But it was never empty. “We had this huge congregation of people from across the Loop who came on a daily basis.”

Adults could receive instruction in the Catholic faith, but when her daughter was preparing to make her First Holy Communion in 1984, there was no religious education for children.

“They didn’t think they had any children,” Morey said. But when she and other parishioners organized classes that year, 45 children showed up. The majority were in preschool.

Still welcoming people

Dorothy O’Malley, a parishioner who cochaired the anniversary gala, said the parish has continued to follow the pattern of welcoming new groups of people.

“Each time, it serves the people it started out with, and we keep growing and inviting new people to join us,” O’Malley said.

The parish still is extremely diverse, racially and economically, said Maryann Cushings, a pastoral associate. It was already that way in 1899, when the Chicago Tribune ran a story headlined, “The Parish of Contrasts — Extremes of Life Depicted in the Strangest Religious Subdivision in the U.S.”

“It is a strikingly diverse community,” Kallock said. “It is very noticeably a mixed group of people.”

It encourages that mixing with coffee and refreshments after every Mass, drawing people in and making them feel welcome to participate. The new church has an intimate atmosphere, and is fully wheelchair accessible. Listening devices are available for the hearing impaired.

The school, which opened with 18 preschoolers on 2004, now has 82 students in preschool through second grade. It’s adding a grade each year, and looking into building a new facility.

“There’s just something about Old St. Mary’s,” Morey said, noting that since she moved into the “parish without parishioners in 1981, members of her family have received every sacrament except Holy Orders there, “You look at your surroundings, look at your people, feel those needs and meet those needs.”

Hecker for sainthood

In 1833, when Old St. Mary’s parish was founded, Isaac Thomas Hecker was a teenage boy, working in a foundry, soon to join his brothers in a New York bakery. Raised a Methodist, he was questioning what God wanted of him.

He continued that spiritual seeking for years, before joining the Catholic Church in 1844 and was ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1849. While he and his brother Redemptorists found success offering parish missions, he was dismissed from the congregation in 1858 when he traveled to Rome without permission to request the creation of an “American House” of Redemptorists.

Pope Pius IX later reversed the dismissal in favor of annulling the vows of Hecker and his companions. The pope approved Hecker’s plans. And he set off to start a new congregation, aimed at converting North America to Catholicism, with the approval of Archbishop John Hughes of New York.

Hecker died in 1888, 15 years before the Paulists came to Chicago and began ministering at Old St. Mary’s Parish. But Paulist Father Michael Kallock, the present pastor, said the parish has upheld his vision of evangelization and teaching.

Cardnal Edward Egan of New York formally opened Hecker’s sainthood cause Jan. 27, saying Hecker was “a real-life saint like you and me.”

“He was a person who suffered, who made his way through life bearing crosses and who taught that sanctity can be captured in many different ways,” the cardinal added.

Father John Duffy, president of the Paulist Fathers, said it was Hecker’s “driving conviction that if the principles of freedom and democracy of this country were combined with the teachings of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by the Catholic Church then America could become a light to the nations.”

Old St. Mary's Timeline

  1. 1843 — Father Maurice de St. Palais builds a new Gothic church on the southwest corner of Madison Street and Wabash Avenue. Chicago becomes a diocese; St. Mary becomes a cathedral.
  2. Oct. 8-9, 1871 — All the buildings of St. Mary Parish are destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.
  3. May 5, 1833 — First Mass celebrated by Father John Mary Irenaeus St. Cyr, who was sent from St. Louis. First church built near State and Lake streets
  4. 1839 — Father Timothy O’Meara, the second pastor, relocates the church to the northwest corner of Madison Street at Wabash Avenue.
  5. Oct. 9, 1872 — The former Plymouth Congregational Church at 9th Street and Wabash became the new St. Mary Church — now known as Old St. Mary’s, as Holy Name Cathedral is under construction.
  6. About 1880 — Parish school closed. Black Catholics begin meeting for worship in St. Mary’s basement.
  7. Nov. 15, 1903 — The Paulist Fathers from New York take charge of St. Mary at the invitation of Archbishop James P. Quigley.
  8. May 29, 1961 — A new chapel, at Van Buren and Wabash, was dedicated. The move north was intended to make it more convenient for Loop workers.
  9. Sept. 27, 1970 — The last Mass is celebrated at the old church, which was demolished the following month. The Paulist Fathers moved into the former Isabella Building, 21 E. Wabash.
  10. July 21, 2002 — Cardinal George dedicates the new Old St. Mary’s Church at 1500 S. Michigan.
  11. August 2004 — Old St. Mary’s opens a new parish school with 18 preschoolers. By 2008, it had more than 80 students in preschool through second grade.