Holy Cross Church in Durham marked Black Catholic History Month with an oral history presentation Nov. 14. Named “Celebrating our Elders,” the event featured several seniors who belong to the historically Black parish.
Following the first Sunday Mass this Nov., a procession of the parish’s elders danced and swayed from the sanctuary into the church’s community room, moving to the rhythm of an African hand drum. Soon after the drumming stopped, the church’s gospel choir transitioned to a powerful rendition of the hymn, “Praise Him. He is worthy to be praised.”
The event – which complemented the church’s display of photos and books about Catholics of African descent – celebrated the parish’s identity and history as a faith home of Catholics in Durham, whether they be immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, or a local Protestant convert.
The parish was founded in 1939 by Jesuits as a welcoming place for African American Catholics. Since Sept. 2014, the Franciscan Friars Conventual from Our Lady of the Angels Province in Maryland have been providing pastoral leadership for the parish.
Following a blessing by Father Bart Karwacki, the young children present were invited to sit at the feet of the elders, who had taken seats in a semicircle at the front of the room. Over the next hour, each of these pillars of the Holy Cross community shared stories and wisdom from their lives and from their time in the church.
The following five elders on the panel reflected the great diversity that exists within the African Ancestry Catholic experience in America:
- Zita Bowal, from Guyana in South America
- Violet Duport, from the island of St. Christopher in the Caribbean
- Sid Myers, from the Central American country of Panama
- Celina Umari, from Nigeria in Africa
- Helen Hudson, who grew up a Protestant in a rural area outside of Sanford
Hudson, who is the longest-attending, active parishioner, started coming to Holy Cross in the late 1940s while a student at the North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University. She was raised in a Protestant family, but while she was away from her family at school in Durham, she began attending Catholic Mass with her friends. A couple years later, she decided to convert.
“This was not pleasing to my aunt and the rest of the family,” she said. “They said, ‘You’ve always been a Methodist, why are you going to change?’ And I said, ‘Well, I like what they’re doing.’”
She said that at times she wouldn’t attend church, or she would try out another church, but, “I always ended up back at Holy Cross. It’s a part of my life and will remain as long as I live.”
While Helen’s story begins closer to home, Holy Cross parishioners represent a wide variety of backgrounds.
Zita Bowal describes herself as a cradle Catholic. Raised on a sugar estate in Guyana, a small English-speaking South American country, she said her community was an eclectic mix of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. “We all lived together in one community,” she said.
With a background that wouldn’t be typical in most North Carolina parishes, especially in previous decades, finding a place to attend church could have been difficult. But once Bowal found Holy Cross, she said she knew she’d found the place for her.
“I was asked to stand up and introduce myself, and that was the beginning of a good time,” she said. “I am so happy to be in this church. I am welcomed. I feel at home in this church.”
Violet Duport, 89, said that where she came from in the Caribbean, life was hard, and sometimes her large family prayed that by the end of the day they would at least have a potato to share. When things got particularly desperate, she left seven children behind with her relatives to try to find a way of supporting them in the United States. She did not consider that, when she arrived, her skin color would be a concern, especially at church.
“Because to me if you’re a Christian, you shouldn’t mind the color of my skin,” she said. “Everybody in my country looked like me. So, when I came to America and went to a Catholic church, I was shell-shocked, because the only person in the room that looked like me, was me.”
Duport said that when she was in Oklahoma, and it was time to offer the peace greeting, she got ready to shake hands with those around her, thinking she would be greeted as warmly as she was used to.
“I turned to the family next to me to say, ‘Peace be with you,’ with my hand out, and they gave me their back, because I was me and they were them,” she said. “But I said, ‘Peace be with you, anyway. And have a blessed day.’”
After this, when she visited American churches, she would sit in the back and then try to slip out before anyone else did so nobody would know she had been there. Duport moved to Durham and found Holy Cross.
She said she looked around and thought, “Everybody looks like me! Thank you, Jesus. I’m home.”
Celina Umari is from Nigeria originally and has lived in many countries around the world. She said she experienced similar treatment as Duport. The first thing Umari would do when she got to a new town was to look for the Catholic church. In many places, she said, she was treated poorly, “because of the way I looked.”
In Poland for example, she said that during the offering of peace, “They didn’t just turn away; they walked away.”
Since relocating to Durham and finding Holy Cross, Umari said she feels like she’s found a home. “One thing about this church: I went around the world, and I never had a church that felt like it was mine,” she said. “But here, just like in Nigeria, these are my people.”
What she loves most about Holy Cross, she said, is that they are “very friendly.” While she’s not mobile, she says she comes to church every day, and, “Because of the friendliness of this group, I never have to ask for a ride.”
Sid Myers, the sole male on the panel, was born and raised in Panama, Central America, to parents from Jamaica and Barbados.
“From a very early age, Catholicism was my religious foundation,” Myers said. “I remember my father taking me to the tailor to have my first white suit made for first Communion and my confirmation.”
He became an altar server, which, he said, was an experience that “filled me with a love for the Mass, which is still with me to this day.”
When Myers graduated from high school in 1959, his strong faith guided his decision to go to college at Xavier University in Louisiana. Years later, he moved to Durham.
Myers says that his faith makes him “feel reassured when I am challenged and troubled,” and that this peace “is not an escape from trouble, but the courage to face it calmly.”
Holy Cross has been a place of refuge for African Ancestry Catholics for 80 years, giving them this reassurance and courage through troubling times. Like Christ and the Holy Family, they were often turned away when they needed a place to call home, but Holy Cross welcomed them and created a place to form a uniquely African American Catholic identity that is also welcoming to others in search of a Catholic spiritual home.