{This is a memory from the six decades the author has spent writing about faith communities in daily, weekly and monthly news publications covering the western third of Virginia.}
Several weeks ago, I mentioned in this column that “The Catholic Virginian,” a 16-page newspaper issued by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond, had finally made its way to my Salem home.
When I moved around the corner in 2014, the paper apparently kept coming to my former residence. Though not Catholic, I had the publication sent to me to follow some of the events affecting members who support parishes in Roanoke, Salem, Botetourt and Craig Counties.
I called the diocesan headquarters in Richmond and asked a helpful staff member if I could simply receive the paper by e-mail as the vast majority of church leaders employ now to save money. Somewhat surprisingly, the person said she’d prefer to get my forwarding address, and now the paper is arriving in my mailbox.
As in many years past, when Charles Mahon, one of my fellow journalism students at Richmond Professional Institute in Richmond was editor, the paper is still top-notch in presenting factual stories about the church on topics from the international down to the local parish level.
I was especially interested to learn that the diocese – the regional administrative body that covers most congregations in Virginia except those close to Washington – has just concluded a reduced celebration of its 200th Anniversary.
It spurred me to look back at my files which revealed the exciting period of the 1970s when Western Virginia Roman Catholics were under the care of Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, a liberal who embraced the major changes that had come to the church since Vatican Council II held in the mid-1960s.
I had known Sullivan since the arrival of late husband Charles and I in 1953 as we joined the reporting staff of the afternoon daily Roanoke newspaper, “The Roanoke World-News.” He was a young assistant at the prestigious St. Andrew’s Catholic Church which crowns the hill just north of downtown Roanoke. My age contemporary, Sullivan often brought to the newsroom each Friday the weekly announcement of services which in those long-ago times the newspaper carried free in recognition of the churches’ value to the city.
The assistant at St. Andrew’s soon moved up to pastorates in the Diocese of Richmond. In 1974, he became the 11th spiritual and administrative head of parishes in much of the commonwealth and served until retiring in 2003. He continued to assist his successor, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, until becoming ill with liver cancer. It took his life at 84 in 2012.
Around 1970, as my own career as religion writer for the afternoon daily newspaper was becoming more active, Catholics became the source of many interesting news stories. Many of these centered-on developments at Our Lady of Nazareth parish which dated from 1914 and served the growing West End and Southwest neighborhood of the city. It occupied a plain brick structure near Calvary Baptist Church.
Soon after Sullivan became bishop, the decision was made to relocate the Nazareth parish to the Southwest County suburbs. In 1976, this began on a site on the upgraded four-lane highway known as Electric Road.
But even before the move, the winds of change were blowing hard through the old parish. John Kain, an imaginative priest smart enough to get to know news writers, was happy to tell me the many new practices going into effect at the church to which he had been assigned. When Kain resigned his office in order to marry a widow from the church I now attend, the Nazareth congregation rebelled against the more traditionalist pastor assigned there.
Bishop Sullivan came up from Richmond to tell his people that he would send them a more acceptable priest.
Under Thomas Caroluzza, a warmly liberal clergyman, the big move from the inner city to suburbs was made some 40 years ago. The starkly simple church shocked some. Its pastor said it was planned deliberately that way so, “In this empty space, we as God’s people, celebrate.” Joseph Lehman, one of Caroluzza’s successors, followed the same likable pattern and remained beloved ecumenically for 20 years.
I recall too from this period the late J. Louis Flaherty, who served briefly as pastor of St. Andrew’s; he did much to open cordial relationships with non-Catholic clergy through the then-influential Roanoke Ministers Conference. I was not surprised when he was elevated to auxiliary bishop to help with the new Arlington Diocese.
Some traditionalists formed a protest group; I went to several of its meetings where leaders spoke bitterly of the changes which, at one point, moved close to permitting non-Catholics to share Communion.
It took several decades for things to settle down. Sullivan’s two successors have been less inclined to make changes. The Nazareth building now has been slightly modified to identify it as a house of worship. Two women religious – nuns – with Sullivan’s blessing, helped start congregations in Botetourt, Rocky Mount and Moneta. A few Black priests encouraged both interracial and ecumenical aid programs. Sullivan’s acceptance of LGBTQ members continues.
The former Nazareth church became the site of Roanoke Area Ministries for which the newspaper’s Good Neighbors Fund provides some support each Christmas season.
