There is life after soup kitchen - background of a Hartford, Connecticut parish that rejected a soup kitchen

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 21, 1994 by Steve Burkholder

HARTFORD, Conn. - At the friary and other offices next door to the oldest Roman Catholic parish in Connecticut, iron grates cover the windows in the portals.

The metalwork is more than ornamental., It is a precaution against crime at a downtown church on the edge of this city's scarred North End.

The grates notwithstanding, St. Patrick and St. Anthony Church has an open-door ministry that its loyal parishioners believe is in keeping with the gospel and the notion of a tolerant church offering solace in a troubled modern world. The same could have been said for the soup kitchen that the parish had planned to put in the church's cavernous basement, church members say, until the Hartford archbishop vetoed the proposal late last year.

In the pews that offer asylum amid city noise, elderly Italian-American and Irish-American churchgoers who have followed papal dicta all their lives sit beside men and women in their 20s and 30s whose alienation and lifestyles threatened to lead them away from Catholicism. And among them all are a growing number of young families and older couples who say the one-hour trip past their neighborhood churches to get to the 165-year-old Hartford parish is worth the time and miles.

"They're full of love and compassion," Nancy La Bonne, whose son, Greg, died of AIDS last July, said of the Franciscan friars who lead St. Patrick and St. Anthony.

"They feel for everybody. They're not phony," said her husband, Ted. "They make life enjoyable."

A life holding joy does not seem to be a small accomplishment for the La Bonnes, whose son, during his last months, was too ill to attend the special retreats for those suffering from AIDS that have been held at St. Patrick and St. Anthony since 1991. As part of the church's AIDS ministry, Fr. Jerome Massimino, the pastor, visited Greg La Bonne at his home. Massimino "became almost a part of the family," said Ted La Bonne.

The church's friars and lay people also lead regular meetings of a group called Tiberius, for persons who are HIV-positive, and of another, known as Journeys, for spouses, parents and other family and friends of persons of AIDS and HIV.

The La Bonnes, who live 90 minutes away in Danbury, Conn., completed the church's nine-week bereavement program for families struck by the disease. Drawn by the parish's open-arms Masses, they continue to attend services at St. Patrick and St. Anthony, taking in what they call the friars' friendliness and the church's good music, part of what Ted La Bonne labels "an outstanding church and community."

Late last year, the La Bonnes bought 30 comfortable, overstuffed chairs to help furnish the Franciscans' center for urban ministry, the site of the AIDS retreats. That act served as both a thank you to the church and a living memorial to their son.

"The number 30 because my son was 30 when he died," explained Ted La Bonne.

Since 1990, when the Franciscans took over the parish, the church seems to have bloomed. The pastoral leaders of St Patrick and St. Anthony pattern its mission on that of the Franciscans' New York City-based Holy Name of Jesus province, which focuses on downtown ministries in cities along the Atlantic seaboard, offering help and guidance to "the poor and alienated" while serving the church's more traditional constituency, Massimino told NCR.

Along with the AIDS ministry and reaching out to central Connecticut's gay and lesbian Catholics, St. Patrick and St. Anthony also conducts adult Christian formation, a young adult ministry "for people in their 20s and 30s looking for something different," a business ethics and religion-in-the-workplace program and, more recently, religious education classes for children, said Massimino.

"We had first communion last year, for the first time in at least 15 years," said the pastor. "We've tripled our congregation over three years and happily ... tripled our collection as well."

Massimino stressed the inclusive nature of the parish. "Too often people are reminded of their sinfulness and not enough of their goodness," he said. "It's an incredible cross section of people. We believe if we welcome people warmly and give homilies based on the gospel and have singable music, it's a three-way combination that can't be beat.

"Of the three, it's the hospitality that is key," he added. "We can no longer take for granted that people feel they have to come to Mass on Sunday."

Julie Smith, a public school teacher in Windsor, a nearby suburb, and a member of the parish council who also ministers to women with AIDS, voiced disappointment with the recent decision by Hartford Archbishop Daniel A. Cronin. Last month the prelate rejected appeals to allow Hartford's long-running House of Bread to relocate its crowded soup kitchen and day shelter to the church's 20,000-square foot basement, now used for storage of pews and other church property.

Smith and the Rev. King T. Hayes, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Hartford's predominantly African-American North End, said that having the soup kitchen and shelter at the church would have rounded out the church's mission, offering physical nourishment alongside the spiritual.