The Catholic New World - Cover Story - A parish redefines itself

A young churchgoer prays during the bilingual Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Parish. Catholic New World/David V. Kamba

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Ten years ago, St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Melrose Park was just starting its first weekly Spanish Mass.

This year, parishioners can attend any of four Masses in Spanish every weekend, or the weekly bilingual Mass. Last October, only 150 of the 2,031 people who attended Mass there chose one of the two English Masses, said Scalabrinian Father Clair Antonio Orso, the pastor.

“In 10 years, we had a 95 to 97 percent change,” said Orso, who was first assigned to the parish in 1993.

St. Charles Borromeo, like many parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago, has watched the number of Hispanic members grow steadily over the last decade.

Census figures show a Hispanic population explosion in the archdiocese. The number of people in Cook and Lake counties who identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino on the 2000 census jumped nearly 60 percent, from 732,764 in 1990 to 1.2 million last year.

Based on the counts of people in the archdiocese’s churches last October, there are about 789,000 Hispanic Catholics in the archdiocese, said Father Esequiel Sanchez, director of Hispanic Ministry.

“But I think that misses a lot of people,” Sanchez said. “If that’s the number, it’s way too low. We’re losing too many.”

But one thing the October count of people at Mass does not take into account is people who might be active parishioners in other ways, but miss weekend Masses because of work.

The change in Melrose Park echoed the change in the archdiocese as a whole, but it was even more dramatic in Stone Park, which makes up part of St. Charles Borromeo Parish. There, the Hispanic population doubled.

When change came, it came quickly, Orso said. By the time he arrived at St. Charles Borromeo in 1993, most of the English-speakers were already gone. The young people had either moved out and started their families elsewhere, or moved away as soon as Spanish-speaking families started moving in.

Now a community and a parish that was once home to Italians, Lithuanians and Poles has become increasingly Hispanic—a change that mirrors many Chicago neighborhoods and near suburbs.

Most of the English-speaking parishioners who have stayed at St. Charles Borromeo are older, Orso said.

“Most of the ones I have seen move, they moved to the cemetery,” he said, “Or it was a couple where one died, and the other one moved out to be with their children. I was not here when they had the big move.”

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t face discontent between the English- and Spanish-speaking parishioners. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The parish school had recently closed, and the parish was left with a large debt.

“I had one group saying, ‘I didn’t make the debt, so why should I have to pay it?’” he said. “The other group said the first group didn’t contribute anything.”

The first move was to get the Spanish-speaking community to begin to take ownership. Orso organized teams of volunteers to take over the cleaning and most of the maintenance of the church, saving the cost of hiring services. Then a group of Spanish-speaking parishioners took over the fiesta for Our Lady of Guadalupe, and raised $8,000—more than three times what the feast had brought in before.

“Then the ones who were criticizing, saying they weren’t doing anything, had to shut their mouths,” he said.

And he kept working with Spanish-speaking groups about the need to pay off the debt.

“I would tell them, if we own the house, we have to pay the bills,” he said. “In two and a half years, we had paid off the debt.”

Grace Marella, who works in the church office, remembers the change well. Marella grew up in the parish, and raised her own children there. She remembers the dances, fashion shows and small fund-raisers that used to take place frequently—one year, the parish did something like that every month.

Now the parish has two big fund-raisers a year, on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and on a summer weekend, which they call “The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Summer.”

The summer celebration, when the weather is warm enough for a big outdoor procession, is the biggest fund-raiser of the year, she said.

In 1992, when the parish celebrated its 50th anniversary, not many of the Hispanic parishioners came to the dinner.

Looking back, she can see a few reasons why.

“Most of them had just been here a few years, so our 50th anniversary might not have meant much to them,” she said. “And the Spanish people usually want to bring their kids, and it was kind of expensive, especially to bring kids.”

Now many of the church activities have changed from more social events to programs that will be of use to recent immigrants: classes in very basic English—enough to start a more formal English-as-a-Second Language class, health fairs for the children and citizenship drives.

At the same time, Marella has watched teams of Spanish parishioners step in to take care of the church and its buildings the same way they care for the homes they have purchased.

To serve Hispanics and other immigrant groups, parishes must learn to be more multicultural, Sanchez said. In the past, members of most ethnic groups simply attended their own churches, but that’s no longer the case. Now nearly a third of the archdiocese’s 378 parishes offer at least one Mass in Spanish every week.

“Hispanics are entering every parish in the archdiocese,” he said. “And parishes have had to change their ministerial philosophy. Not only is the community growing, but they are definitely making impacts in their expressions of faith. Less than 10 years ago, the main expression of Hispanic faith was the Pilsen Way of the Cross. Now there are more than 50 parishes doing their own living Way of the Cross.”

Those expressions center more on the experience of the ritual than traditional U.S. Catholicism, which relied more on logical argument, Sanchez said. For many Hispanics, the expression of faith is in the sights, the sounds, the smell and the taste of the liturgy.

“For example, taking away the statues from the churches—for Hispanics, that’s detrimental,” Sanchez said. “We’re looking for our heroes. We’re looking for the family pictures up on the wall.”

One way Orso tries to make everyone feel welcome is to offer a bilingual Mass every week. The 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass includes all of the children in the religious education program, both in English and in Spanish classes, and Orso makes a point of inviting their parents to join them.

“We are doing a special occasion every week. It’s working beautiful, at least from my point of view,” Orso said. “We are getting about 500 people every week.”

Those people hear Orso, a Brazilian whose native language is Portuguese, move back and forth between English and Spanish. They can follow the prayers in bilingual missalettes, he said, and he does read the Gospel twice—once in each language. But he only gives the homily once, switching back and forth and repeating key points or questions.

He makes sure, he said, to wrap it up in about an hour. Going too long might turn some members of the congregation against the idea of a bilingual Mass, and it would definitely create parking problems for the people who want to attend the noon Spanish Mass.

Most of the Spanish-speaking people who attend the Mass every week speak at least some English, Orso said, but the English speakers tend to speak English only. The demographics of the parish are such that most of the English speakers are older, he said.

“They tell me they remember the Latin Mass,” he said. “And they didn’t understand the Latin, either.”