Shrine of the Sacred Heart

structure.

The current church is actually the second that the Shrine of the Sacred Heart community has called home. The original red brick structure was dedicated in 1901, and the current structure in 1922. Both buildings were influenced by the City Beautiful architectural movement which overtook Washington from 1901 to 1910. [Flemons, Dr. Delois. "A Brief History of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart" (booklet). Published by the Shrine of the Sacred Heart (Washington), 1999.]

The parish was originally part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore before the Diocese (later Archdiocese) of Washington in 1923.

History

Shrine of the Sacred Heart Pastors 1 1899-1914 Father Joseph McGee 2 1914-1937 Monsignor Patrick C. Gavan 3 1938-1948 Monsignor James A. Smyth 4 1948-1958 Monsignor E. Jerome Winter 5 1958-1970 Monsignor John S. Spence (Bishop, 1964) 6 1970-1973 Monsignor Martin W. Christopher 7 1973-1976 Father Joseph A. Ranieri (later Monsignior) 8 1976-1984 Father Joaqin A. Bazan (later Monsignior) 9 1984-1990 Father Roman Rozacheson, OFM Cap 10 1990-1995 Father Robert E. McCreary, OFM Cap 11 1995-2001 Father Francis Xavier Russo, OFM Cap 12 2001-Present Father Stephen Carter, OFM Cap

The church is located at 3211 Pine Street (also known as Sacred Heart Way), nestled in between the Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights regions of the District of Columbia, just off 16th Street, Northwest, for a long time a "de facto" dividing line in the tensely racially divided Washington in the period after the city's 1968 riots.

The original parish church was located at the corner of 14th Street and Park Road, Northwest (current site of the Tivoli Theater), and the current church was established in the 20s. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Murphy and Olmstead, and the architectural sculptor was John J. Earley. ["Ibid 1"] Incoroprated into the design is Earley's innovative technique of beautifying concrete by infusing the mixture with fragmented quartz stones, then scraping away the surface of the concrete during drying to further expose the stones as the concrete sets. The same technique can be seen in Earley's work at Meridian Hill Park, a half mile to the south. [ [http://www.bahaitemple.org/timeline/1932_more.html The Dawing Place - 1932 Learn more ] ]

Local tradition holds that the church was built on a spur off 16th Street because the artery was home to many mainline Protestant churches, whose leaders objected to a Roman Catholic church joining them on 16th Street, long the home of high-profile religious institutions in Washington. Locals also pass on a similar as-yet-unverified story for the mansion and property next door to the church, which houses a branch of the DC Department of Recreation, supposedly because a previous owner donated it to the city out of a fear that it would eventually fall into Catholic hands if it was sold to another private owner.

Though the church was built by wealthy patrons, who reportedly raised the funds in three weeks, it is now spiritual home to many lower-income immigrant families, largely Latin American, with a particular concentration of Salvadoran-Americans. The parish regularly celebrates mass in Spanish, English, Haitian Creole, and Vietnamese. For vigil masses on Holy Thursday, Easter, and Christmas, the church encourages all communitites to celebrate together and the vigil mass is said in seven languages.

The church is administered by priests of the Franciscan Capuchin Order. The current pastor is Fr. Stephen Carter, OFM Cap.

Culture

The church has a long history of social justice ministry, and has been the frequent host of the District's labor mass on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, as well as the home of the Hermano Pedro homeless outreach program and the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Dinner Program, and is affiliated with local social service organizations such as the Spanish Catholic Center and Neighbors Consejo. The parish houses large devotions to Our Lady of Guadalupe (Sacred Heart hosts her feast day December 12 for the entire archdiocese) and Óscar Romero, the slain Archbishop of San Salvador, though the movement to beatify and possibly canonize Romero appears stalled.

Several dozen flags hang from the church's choir loft, representing the nations of birth and ancestry for the highly diverse congregation.

acred Heart School

The church has a parish school, though it no longer retains full control of it. In the late 1990s, the church realized it could no longer adequately finance the school, a fate shared by several inner-city Washington parishes, despite the continued popularity of Catholic education in a city in need of alternatives to a struggling public school system. In 1997, the archbishop at the time, James Cardinal Hickey established the Center City Consortium [ [http://www.faithinthecity.net/ The Center City Consortium - Catholic Schools Making a Difference! ] ] , subsidizing these schools from a general archdiocese fund, pooling their resources, and sharing their costs. The archdiocese has direct fiscal ovesight over these schools. Sacred Heart's priests still minister to the school spiritually. The Sacred Heart School continues to receive praise and honors, even as several of these Consortium schools continue to be threatened. It is one a very few United States Catholic parish schools operating with a bilingual curriculum. The school's principal is Dr. Sandra Rojas.

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