By Rita McInerney

A "tiny little parish that has had a relatively large impact" on its neighborhood is the way Father Joseph Cavallo, pastor, describes Our Lady of Lourdes at 20 Boulevard, across the street from the King Center.

You could say it has been that way since its beginning 75 years ago, an event being celebrated this month. Father Ignatius Lissner, of the Society of African Missions, saw the need for a black Catholic mission on a visit to segregated Atlanta in 1911. After one effort to purchase property was thwarted by outraged whites, he succeeded in purchasing land on Boulevard with the help of J. J. Spalding, a prominent Catholic from Sacred Heart parish. Some time after the purchase on March 1912, he received $16,000 needed to construct a mission building from Mother Mary Katherine Drexel, foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, an order she had established in 1891 to serve black and Indian people.

Three events have been planned by the anniversary committee to mark the 75^th anniversary of a parish that remains the spiritual home for many blacks living in suburban Atlanta today. Former teachers will return for the services which begin with an ecumenical on Monday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. Mayor Andrew Young will speak and ministers from nearby churches and institutions will bring greetings. Also scheduled to speak is Jack Spalding, retired editor of the Atlanta Journal, and grandson of the mission's first benefactor.

An archdiocesan Mass will be celebrated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 6 p.m. with Monsignor John F. McDonough, diocesan administrator, as principal celebrant. Sister Judith McGinley, of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, principal of the school from 1970 until 1973, will speak. She is now assigned to St. Peter Claver School in Macon.

Readings will be given by Charles Bowen and Mrs. Carlene Thomas, a longtime parishioner whose efforts for the parish were recognized at the dedication of the new church building Feb. 12, 1961. Mrs. Thomas and Homer Bennett were presented with the papal honor, Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice, by Bishop Francis E. Hyland who presided at the dedication.

Father Frank Giusta, former pastor, will be principal celebrant of the anniversary homecoming Mass on Sunday, Nov. 22 at 3 p.m. Former pastors and other priests of the archdiocese will concelebrate.

Sister Anna Kearns, CSJ, principal of Our Lady of Lourdes School, and Sister Mary Jane Stapleton, RSM, director of religious education, will give the readings, and Deacon Homer Woods will proclaim the Gospel. Speaker will be a Lourdes graduate, Judge Albert L. Thompson, of the state court of Fulton County.

Anyone returning for the anniversary celebrations will find changes, a new appreciation of space and color in the church interior. The altar area has been brought forward and a small inner chapel installed behind new altar walls angling out from either side of a large cross-shaped opening. Through this opening is clearly seen the large crucifix, softly illuminated by backlighting, dominating the high back wall of the new chapel.

Tony Viscardi, the architect, achieved a cross within a cross effect by designing a walk-through cross in a divider placed inside the glass front doors. This is lined up with the large cross on the altar and serves to dramatize the entrance of the priest for Mass.

The architect attended Sunday Mass a few times before designing the changes. He was impressed by the congregation joining hands during the Lord's Prayer, the priest reaching out his arms to the people and the angle of the late morning sun as it flooded the small church.

He said the space was designed to have everything radiate around the altar; the walls "winging out" symbolize the priest reaching out to the people. Two spans arching from either side of the altar further convey unity between priest and people.

"To make the space glow, impart an ethereal feeling," he used soft shades of blue and wine on the new walls and arches, and the lightest shade of pine on the side walls to soften the effect of sunlight which filters green through the blue and gold stained glass windows.

He described his work at Lourdes as one of his "greatest experiences as an architect," and said he was glad his mother was able to see his church work last Easter Sunday, a short time before she died.

Money for the alterations was raised, according to Janis Griffin of the anniversary committee, by parishioners who staff a food concession at Fulton County Stadium and through private donations made to Father Cavallo.

There are about 20 who rotate turns working at the stadium concession, she said. The county allows the non-profit groups operating the concessions to keep 10 percent of the profit. The Lourdes workers had raised about $7,000 before the football strike began.

The parish, founded as a mission to serve the handful of black Catholics then in Atlanta, is the only non-territorial one in the city and is situated within the boundary of Sacred Heart parish. While its earliest members were mainly from nearby neighborhoods, today its families are scattered all over. Wesley Chapel, over by St. Joseph's Village, Stone Mountain, according to Father Cavallo.

The rolls include upwardly mobile families from expensive homes in suburbia who come back to their Lourdes' roots, as well as a few elderly men and women still living in old houses and small project apartments nearby, and about 20 or 30 poor families whose children receive scholarship aid to attend Lourdes school. In all, there are about 500 parishioners in 220 family units, the pastor said. About six white families are active and five or six Vietnamese families attend church. "We are trying to get them active," he said.

The archdiocese grants about seven or eight thousand dollars a year in scholarship money. It provided 16 students with scholarship aid this year, only two of whom were Catholic, he said.

The parish needs subsidies from the archdiocese for the school, where about 180 students are enrolled in grades kindergarten through sixth, and for religious education. Otherwise, Father Cavallo said, the parish is self-supporting. Collections run about $1,000 each Sunday and on a good Sunday might reach $1,500.

"Sister Anna is trying to achieve a balance (in the school) of upper middle class students and the poor," he said. He estimated that half the students are in the former category. "We would like more scholarships to provide more services and outreach to the neighborhood. Lourdes is going to have to look and see what it is that is going to draw people…"

The pastor views the school "as a real tool of evangelization" because it offers a Catholic Christian message to a number of unchurched families with children enrolled. Such evangelization through the classroom is a continuation of the religious tradition brought to Lourdes by four sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. They were sent from Pennsylvania by Mother Drexel to educate the children of the "black flock in Atlanta," as she wrote to Bishop Benjamin Kelly in March 1913, after receiving his permission to work in Atlanta.

In the same handwritten letter she asks for "the great privilege of having our sacramental Lord with us and having Benediction and Exposition in our little convent chapel. For surely we must ever say as the disciple said on the road to Emmaus, 'Remain with us.'"

The foundress, a member of a wealthy banking family in Philadelphia whose canonization is now being sought in Rome, was a practical woman with a keen business sense who regularly visited her sisters in the South to make sure that "everything was the way it was supposed to be," according to Sister McGinley.

"Our philosophy was always interdenominational," Sister McGinley said. "We always had a majority of non-Catholics in the school. The children came from all over the city. At that time the parents were still struggling, many were domestics. There was a very good PTA, but the school did not have too many activities. The parish was relatively poor and the pastors usually had another job in the diocese."

"It was with great pain that we left," Sister McGinley recalled. "We were all very close and loved each other very much. We were trying to force integration, to have the children enroll in other schools with white students. The people were very loyal to us, but we felt that it was time for the mothering community to withdraw." Another reason for the departure in 1974 was the belief that their missionary labors were no longer necessary.

After the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament left, Sister Margaret McAnoy, IHM, said she applied for and was appointed principal. During her years, until 1980, the enrollment reached 330 and included many children whose parents worked downtown. The sixth grade was eliminated and kindergarten added, she said, so that energy and finances could be spent on the lower grades where a child's ability to make it academically would be identified and nurtured.

The parish social action committee reaches out to the neighborhood under the leadership of Mrs. Mattie Smith. A parishioner since 1944, she has an expertise acquired in working 20 years for social agencies.

Father Cavallo said "we've managed to get a grant for Mattie. She works for our social action committee. Twenty hours a week are paid for by SETA (the federal Senior Employment Training Act). Her job is to survey the immediate King neighborhood" to see what the needs are, he added.

The social action committee was one of 95 local organizations receiving grants from Hands Across America last July. From the $5,000 grant she gave $500 to St. Anthony's Night Shelter; $500 to Samaritan House, another shelter; and $500 to the Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger. She works directly with the homeless, currently with the Homeless Union, a group organized by Christ Sprowal, a homeless man turned activist in Philadelphia.

Each month 15 or 20 homeless gather in the parish cafeteria to talk about their problems. They're fed up, Mrs. Smith said, with living in shelters and are trying to find ways to get the housing needed to change their lives for the better.

Food for the neighborhood is a big part of her job. Started by the parish more than five years ago and funded by the grant, church collections and private contributions, it distributes about 20 food boxes each month to the needy, including a number of elderly widows from the parish. Turkeys will be added to the boxes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And Mrs. Smith will give out clothes and toys to families facing a bleak holiday.

Shelley Earle, one of many parish members "so attached we're willing to drive the distance," helps Mrs. Smith on the social justice committee. He said the parish will shortly begin serving Sunday breakfast to needy people in the neighborhood. "We're in a low income area and we don't want to have to turn them away," he said of those people who have been coming to the parish begging for food handouts.

He also serves as parish coordinator for St. Anthony's Night Shelter, is a former president of the parish council and a member of the archdiocesan Committee for Black Catholic Concerns.

Mrs. Thomas is another parishioner who drives a distance, in her case from the southwest near 285. "They come from everywhere, from East Point, College Park. It's a community church and a lot of us have been there a long time," she said. "Three of my four children went to Lourdes. I guess I have roots there."

Mrs. Thomas has seen the church and school grow and was one of the women working hard in the late 1950s to raise money for the new church. She was president of the women's group known as the parish council back then. They raised funds through raffles, fashion shows, individual home parties and contributions, she recalled.

After she retired in 1981 as a Fulton County school teacher, she worked at Lourdes school for two years. Despite having to nurse an aunt, 99, she remains active as a lector and has filled several offices with the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.

"We consider ourselves poor in money but rich in spirit," Shelly Earle said. "When Lourdes started it was a minority within a minority, being black and Catholic. We've come through a lot and we're an integral part of the community."