Parishioners at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC gathered at Mass on June 19, 2024 to acknowledge “sins of racism” that took place there in the late 1800s and early 1900s that led Black parishioners to leave and establish a new parish nearby. Photo credit: Pat Towell 

This past Juneteenth, the parish where I work, Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC, held a momentous gathering to mark a painful time in our history. We gathered in prayer, in song, and in remembrance to ask forgiveness for the sin of racism. In addition to Trinity parishioners, in attendance were descendants of Black parishioners who were once part of our parish.

During a ceremony outside Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington DC, parishioners unveiled a plaque acknowledging the parish’s history of segregation.

When the parish was founded by the Jesuits in 1787, free and enslaved Black people formed a significant portion (possibly one-third) of the initial parish community. Today, people of color make up a much smaller number of parishioners. At the Juneteenth commemoration, we installed and dedicated a plaque that reads in part:

Hundreds of Black parishioners left Holy Trinity in the 1920s and founded Epiphany Catholic Church in Georgetown because of the ongoing segregation and discrimination they found here. O God, forgive us for these sins of racism and the pain they have caused. Guide us from repentance to reconciliation.

Before they left in 1923, Black parishioners had had to sit in a segregated area of the balcony, receiving communion only after white parishioners received, and were excluded from parish activities such as the May procession. When they left the parish, they were motivated, one of them said, “by the same need and desire for freedom to worship that was one of the main reasons that our great nation was explored and settled.”

The event this June was years in the making. While parishioners from Holy Trinity and Epiphany churches held a reconciliation service in 1994 to acknowledge the harm that had been done, little progress had been made since then. I was a new member of Holy Trinity at the time of that service, and when I learned about our history, it was the first time I was exposed to the ways in which racism played out in the American Catholic Church. But there was no ongoing education about this period of the parish’s history, and new parishioners were not introduced to it.

I left the parish in the mid-2000s to attend a different one, and in 2011 I went to Brazil as a Maryknoll lay missioner for five years. When I returned to the U.S., I began working at the parish in 2016. My focus is Ignatian spirituality, and I work in collaboration with our social justice ministry whenever I can.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, our parish community was prompted to look again at our own history — to go beneath the simpler acknowledgements on the history murals and plaques then displayed around our campus. A parish group that included several trained historians formed to begin research on the topic of “Slavery, Segregation and Race in Our Parish.”

Around the same time, our parish’s restorative justice ministry began racial healing circles that partnered with local Black churches. As time went on, we added a yearly retreat on racism, in conjunction with other local Jesuit institutions. We became more committed to becoming an anti-racist parish.

As our History Committee members began reaching out to descendants of the Black parishioners who left in the 1920s, we began to get to know each other. Holy Trinity parishioners were sometimes taken aback to hear the negative feelings some of these descendants held about Holy Trinity. White parishioners hadn’t known the reputation we had among Black Catholics in the city.

Over time, relationships grew and trust increased. The history committee published articles in the bulletin and on our website so that we all could learn more about the Black Catholics who were active in our parish from its founding, and about the ways in which racism and slavery were practiced at our church. This included revelations that our founding pastor had held and sold slaves as part of his role as unofficial treasurer of what was then called Georgetown College.

In 2022 our parish participated in the global celebrations of the Ignatian Year, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits). In an effort to deepen our own conversion, we embarked on a pilgrimage through our own history, and invited Epiphany descendants to join us. Starting at our historic cemetery, Holy Rood, several blocks away, we visited the graves of our Black parishioners (enslaved and free).

Linda Gray, whose ancestors left Washington DC’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the 1920s because of the segregation they experienced there, addressed a crowd that gathered to acknowledge the parish’s racist past. Photo credit: Pat Towell

On our way to Holy Trinity, we passed houses where Black parishioners had lived and met to organize the exodus from Trinity. I was privileged to travel this way with Dorothy Gray and her daughter Linda. Dorothy was born shortly after her parents left Trinity, and knew many of the people involved. She pointed out their homes and shared reminiscences.

At Holy Trinity I guided participants in an imaginative prayer exercise that invited us to imagine ourselves segregated in that balcony, waiting for the white parishioners to receive communion before we were allowed. At our Juneteenth celebration this year, Linda Gray spoke, recalling that prayer experience as one that helped her enter more deeply into the experience of her ancestors.

This year’s gathering was an acknowledgement of the past, but also of the work we still have to do in the present. My experience in mission with Maryknoll Lay Missioners taught me how important relationship is to authentic solidarity, and the necessity of humility.

Relationship, solidarity, and humility have been essential in my parish’s anti-racist efforts. Without humbly building relationships and growing in solidarity, it would have been impossible for us to come together on Juneteenth as we did.

As a board member of Maryknoll Lay Missioners, I acknowledge with our entire organization that anti-racism is a life-long process of deepening conversion, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. While it is work that we must do, we can only do it with God’s guidance and help. I am grateful for my Maryknoll Lay Missioners and fellow parishioner companions on this journey.