By Msgr. Noel Burtenshaw

Father Emmanuel Trainer was sitting across the desk looking at William B. Hartsfield. The famous Atlanta mayor impressed the Passionist priest from New Jersey and he was going to impress him further. He was going to help him in the foundation of St. Paul of the Cross Church.

“It was September 1954,” remembers Father Emmanuel “and I was in Atlanta to get things moving on our new parish. Our Provincial, Father Ernest Welch, had purchased the land. So I came to get the project off the ground.”

At the invitation of Monsignor James Grady, pastor of the Immaculate Conception Church, the visiting priest stayed at the famous Hunter St. (now Martin Luther King Dr.) rectory.

“That’s a story unto itself,” remembers Father Emmanuel. “It was an active parish but it was also a precinct of the Atlanta Police Department. There were cops all over the place all the time. And sometimes at night the assistant, Father Don Kiernan, took me along with him as he rode in the patrol cars. That I.C. was something else. A really great downtown parish.”

Monsignor Grady decided that his visitor needed to see the city’s plans for the new black suburb where the land was located on the expanding southwest side of the city. So he trotted Father Emmanuel down to City Hall to meet his friend of many years, Mayor Hartsfield.

“He was a gentleman,” says Father Trainer “and insisted on calling in his engineer and city planner to show me how the area would develop. They gave me every detail.”

The Mayor and his staff listed schedules for the planned new streets and for utility installation. Hartsfield told the priest about the great perimeter road that would one day pass by the doors of the proposed parish and the expressway that would cross under it on its winding way to Birmingham.

“Two Atlanta brothers were putting the plant together for us,” says Father Emmanuel. “They were Henry and Larry deGive, Henry was the architect and Larry was the builder. The mayor insisted that they call on the city for any help they might need. He was a fine southern gentleman and so proud of his great city.”

The Passionist order was interested in starting a mission among the black community in Atlanta. The fathers and brothers of the famous order had three parishes in North Carolina. With the encouragement of Archbishop O’Hara, then Bishop of Savannah, and with funds donated to their mission and seminary fund, the Atlanta parish was started.

“I remember going to Savannah in the fall of 1954,” says Father Emmanuel “to inform Bishop Hyland (the Auxiliary to the Archbishop) that all was prepared for the new venture. He asked me what I would now do. So I told him I was going back to New Jersey to continue my work with our magazine, SIGN. ‘Then who will be the first pastor?’ he asked. I told him I did not know; ‘I have news for you,’ said Bishop Hyland, ‘you’re it. Congratulations.’ So that’s how I got the news. It was then and there in Savannah. I was delighted.”

Father Emmanuel trainer remained at this new assignment for four and a half years. He was at St. Paul of the Cross when the new Diocese was founded in 1956. He remembers some great helpers of those early days. Dr. and Mrs. Richard Hackney and their family and the well known Yancy family – all of whom, along with many others, brought this new parish family into existence.

In 1958, Father Emmanuel Trainer saw the first buildings, the school and convent, of St. Paul of the Cross open. The beautiful church and rectory would follow some years later. By then his founding pastor would have returned to the Passionist Monastery in Dunkirk, New York but only for a short stay. Soon he was back on his mission work, this time in the Philippine Islands.

“But I remember my years most fondly in Georgia and the new Diocese of Atlanta. Give my best to Father Don Kiernan,” says Father Emmanuel. “I wonder does he still have a red sports car. That I.C. parish was really terrific. You should write a story on that for your series.”

Maybe so, Father. Maybe so.