LITTLE ROCK — As pastor of the state’s largest Catholic parish, Father John Connell sometimes feels he’s leading a large corporation, not just a church.
His days are often a never-ending string of meetings. There’s budgeting to do, 22 staff members to lead and long-term planning needed to keep the almost 21,000-member St. Raphael Catholic Church on track.
“Sometimes I feel like a CEO,” Connell said, noting that his time in seminary wasn’t focused on the business side of the priesthood.
“Oh, I was never prepared for this,” he said. “I was never trained to be an administrator. I use my common sense and my instinct because they don’t teach you how to look at funds and income and expenses. You just sort of learn that. You either learn it or you don’t.”
Connell, 55, has been getting plenty of on-the-job training at St. Raphael, which has been the largest parish in the Diocese of Little Rock for the past decade. According to statistics from the diocese, St. Raphael is home to one out of every seven Catholics in the state. The diocese has 137,287 Catholics.
If all of the parishioners attended one of the weekend services, they wouldn’t fit in the church, which seats about 800 and folding chairs can accommodate 200 more. But with 1,200 crowding into each of the two largest Masses, many are left standing along the walls. In all, it takes seven weekend Masses — three in English and four in Spanish — to hold the thousands who do attend. Connell says that almost 6,000 attend weekend services.
“Yes, we are the largest parish, but that doesn’t mean as pastor I see all 21,000 every weekend,” Connell said. “Most parishes see about onethird of their people and I don’t think I even see a third. I think I see probably about 28 percent of my people. But to put it in perspective, I still see more than most.”
1,000 FAMILIES A YEAR
Since Connell was appointed as priest to the parish in 2009, he estimates that the church has added about 1,000 families a year. Much of the rapid increase has come from growth in the number of Hispanic families in the parish. In 1996 the parish had 27 Hispanic families. By 1999 there were more than 400. The number of registered Hispanic congregants jumped from 135 in 1996 to 10,835 in 2006. Today, about 86 percent of the congregation is Hispanic, Connell said.
“Roughly 18,000,” he said. “That is the majority of our work and it’s the majority of our outreach, everything we do, just about.”
The history of St. Raphael dates to the late 1940s. Father L.H. Schaefer, then pastor of St. Joseph in Tontitown, went to Springdale to meet with local Catholics interested in forming a parish in the city. Schaefer led the group’s first Mass in December 1949 in a funeral home chapel using a cloth-draped ironing board as the altar.
The mission settled into a borrowed house and was named St. Raphael Cenacle the following year. As the years went by, the parish grew and became a self-supporting church in 1965. By 1995 membership topped 500 families, but parishioners couldn’t know how much growth lay ahead or how much their congregation would change.
“It began in the late 1990s,” Connell said.
At the time, four Vincentian priests had arrived to minister to the growing Hispanic community. Two Hispanic deacons were also brought in to help serve the more than 400 Spanishspeaking families. The influx had begun.
“But the parish wasn’t exactly open to the ministry,” Connell said. “It was like, ‘OK, you Latinos in town, we’ll let you have the church for an hour once a week. Come to your Mass and leave. It’s still our parish.’”
SMALL COMMUNITY
Lizzette Castrellon came to Springdale from Chihuahua, Mexico, in December 1995. She was 19 and remembers that the Hispanic community was quite small in the first couple of years.
“We used to have one Mass on Sundays and just a few people were there,” she said. “I remember those days when it was just a few of us.”
The congregation struggled with growing pains, and with cultural and language differences even as its numbers continued to swell. In 1996, English-speaking parishioners outnumbered Hispanics 1,485 to 135. Five years later, the majority was now a minority with Hispanics numbering 4,890 and Anglos 2,409. The gap continued to widen four years later with 10,835 to 2,650.
Castrellon said learning English has been difficult. Even after all these years, she said, she still struggles.
“Some days are better than others,” she said.
For Castrellon and her family, church is a big part of life.
“Everything is around the church,” she said. “It’s very important.”
The cultural tensions have been difficult, but Castrellon thinks that some of the strain has eased as the years have passed.
“It’s better these days,” she said. “It will never be perfect, but I think it’s getting better. People are getting used to the Hispanics. Back then it was hard because everything was new and we were invading. They [the Anglos] felt strange.”
Sandra Keene came to Springdale from New Jersey in the late 1990s with her husband, Walter, as the Hispanic population really began to grow. She agrees that cultural acceptance has improved with better communication. Even though language can still be a barrier, Keene, who doesn’t speak Spanish, said “a smile goes a long way.”
“I think if you take the first step, they will follow,” she said. “We have to love like Jesus would.”
PART OF HER LIFE
Keene said the church is an important part of her life, increasingly so since the death of her husband last year.
“To me, this is my second home,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for the church and the people in it, I wouldn’t be as well adapted to my new way of life.”
Keene said Hispanic and Anglo parishioners came to her husband’s funeral, something that greatly touched her.
“It made me feel so good,” she said. “There are a lot of good people in the parish. ... I think, more and more, we’re becoming more of a family.”
Connell came to the church during another growth spurt. He had been priest at St. Theresa Parish in Little Rock for 15 years and had started a Hispanic Mass there in 2008 even though he spoke no Spanish. Five hundred showed up for the first Spanish Mass.
“At the time, I only read Spanish. I didn’t understand what I was saying and I was reading terribly,” Connell said.
That summer he took an immersion course while living in Mexico for six weeks and learned to speak the language. He came back to St. Theresa’s and “limped along” with the language, and the ministry continued to grow. In 2009 Bishop Anthony B. Taylor asked Connell to go to St. Raphael, to the parish with the largest Hispanic population.
“I did mention to the bishop, ‘I don’t speak Spanish that well and you’re wanting me to take the largest parish?’ and he said, ‘I want you there,’” Connell said. “So I put my faith in the Lord that he would take care of whatever I was lacking.”
Almost three years later Connell is comfortable speaking Spanish.
“One of the hardest things, when I first came here, was I do some of my work in Spanish and some in English and it was very hard to switch languages,” he said. “But now it doesn’t matter. Whatever language you want to speak in, I can do it.”
LEVELING OFF
Connell doesn’t expect the church’s growth to keep up its frantic pace. He sees a time when the numbers will level off or even decline as the rate of immigration continues to slow.
“We’ll have a year where we won’t get that 1,000 new members. We may only get 500 or 200,” he said. “It could be possible that as we go into the second generation or so, they become educated and get college degrees and move off to other cities or areas.”
He has already seen changes. Hispanic members have stepped up to be leaders in the church, and he’s now focused on training new leaders for the future.
“My job is, sort of now, in this monstrous parish, to try to put some order to it and further educate the leaders and raise up new leadership,” he said.
Connell said his style is to move slowly and not make big changes without careful evaluation. For now he’s following a five-year plan that he put in place that includes educational programs in English and Spanish, leadership training for the laity and the formation of a ministry team comprising leaders of the church’s many groups.
“I can meet with this team and know exactly what’s going on,” he said. “Right now I have to go to every single group to find out what’s going on, and it takes a lot of time.”
One thing Connell is sure of, the parish will continue to evolve, which he thinks is a good thing.
“I don’t want a stagnant community,” he said. “I don’t want everything to remain the same. I want people to be challenged in their faith. I want people to learn their faith, to embrace the faith. My job is to provide all those opportunities.”
MORE SPACE NEEDED
A stumbling block is the need for more space. A parish hall addition about four years ago helped a bit, but Connell said the space could have been doubled and they still wouldn’t have enough room.
“There are so many people who want to meet here, to have retreats here, and I don’t have the space and I feel bad,” he said. “I want them all to have their space.”
If Mass attendance increases that will also pose a problem and the need for more services.
But for now, Connell will continue his dual roles of chief executive officer and priest. Despite all of the administrative duties, celebrating Mass remains the high point of his day.
“It always has been, even when I have to do four,” he said. “Celebrating Mass for me is joy. It’s still the No. 1 thing I like about the priesthood. All the other administrative stuff is necessary to then bring further joy and opportunity to the parish. I consider, when something is running smoothly and is organized, that it gives more opportunities for people to grow closer to the Lord.”
Religion, Pages 14 on 05/26/2012