St. Ignatius Is Site of Administrator’s Vows

Jesuit Parish Begins 100th Year in Crown Heights

By Linda Busetti

Linda Busetti Photo 

WORKING TOGETHER: Father Carlos Quijano, S.J., and parishioners attended the recent diocesan Stewardship Day as they plan for the future of St. Ignatius parish, Crown Heights.

St. Ignatius, Crown Heights, the only Jesuit parish in Brooklyn, opened its 100th anniversary year Saturday evening, Nov. 10.

During a jubilee year Mass, Father Carlos R. Quijano, S.J., parish administrator, made his final vows as a Jesuit.

Inside the simple church of St. Ignatius, joyous voices accompanied by tambourines rose to the rafters singing, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”

Mazie Nicholson, a parishioner since 1976, sat in the front pew. Originally from Panama, Nicholson tried to explain how much the parish, where she volunteers with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, means to her. Friends stopped by to greet her and give her a hug.

Nicholson wore a straw hat embroidered with red leaves. Many other women wore hats with their Sunday best for this special occasion.

Lemite Jean-Baptiste, originally from Haiti, smiled broadly as he revealed that he has been part of St. Ignatius for 40 years. He visits the sick and serves as a extraordinary minister of Holy Communion. Over four decades, he has seen many changes in the neighborhood. “Nothing stays as it was before,” he said, but rejoiced in being part of the celebration of 100 years.

St. Ignatius is a culturally diverse and tri-lingual parish as evidenced by bulletin notices which conclude, “Thanks, Merci, Gracias.”

Father Gerald J. Chojnacki, S.J., New York Provincial for the Jesuits, welcomed the congregation who came “to rejoice with Father Carlos.” Among the concelebrants were Msgr. Fernando Ferrarese, Episcopal Vicar for Brooklyn East; Father Daniel LeBlond, S.J., Provincial of French Canada; assistants Fathers Marc Brousseau, S.J., and Dave Ciacimino, S.J.; Father Thomas Ahern, pastor of St. Teresa of Avila, Sterling Pl.; and Father Michael Corcoran, S.J., local Jesuit superior. Also, Jesuit Fathers Rocco Danzi, Thomas Feely, Claudio Burgaletas, Marc Roselli, George Anderson, and Peter Arabia shared in the celebration.

“We praise God for the gift of this man’s life,” Father Chojnacki said.

The congregation sang the Gloria with spirit led by an organist and choir who put smiles of joy on the most serious faces.

After the Gospel reading in Spanish, Father Carlos offered a homily that was frank and from the heart as he expressed his feelings “on this very special occasion.” He stressed that the “big celebration” was about “us as a community, about us, our parish, our family.”

The parish “is a beautiful combination of people coming from many different countries,” Father Quijano said. In addition to the U.S., this includes Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Vincent, Guyana, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Grenada, Panama, Ecuador and more recently, people from Nigeria, Liberia, Congo, Togo and other African countries “have found their spiritual home here at St. Ignatius.”

As he named the various nationalities, Father Carlos was able to point to representative families in the pews.

St. Ignatius has undergone many changes since the Fathers of the Society of Jesus were invited by Bishop Charles McDonnell, himself an alumnus of Jesuit schools, to build a church and school in an area then known as “Crow Hill.” A Jesuit residence was started in the building at 1125 Carroll St. The chapel in the residence became the first church. The first baptism took place there on Aug. 15, 1908. The parish grew from 800 to 2,000 parishioners in the first 10 years.

Soon after, the church moved to a basement room of Jesuit Brooklyn College, what was later Brooklyn Prep and is now part of Medgar Evers College. This space served the parish for four years.

By January 1912, the third church space was erected around the corner on Rogers Ave., which is basically, with some renovations, the church of today.

Early church organizations in the mostly English-speaking parish included the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul, Brooklyn Alumni Sodality, Holy Name Sodality, Apostleship of Prayer, Senior Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Propagation of the Faith and the Loyola Sodality.

By 1968, when Father Francis Tierney, S.J., was pastor, the Spanish Mass was the most well attended. The parish was in transition as shown by a census conducted while Father Arthur Kehoe, S.J., was pastor, which showed 944 families, 686 of whom had resided in the parish for five or less years. A Mass in French, celebrated by Father John Farrand, S.J., or Father Anthony Paone, S.J., was added for the new Haitian community and it soon overtook the Spanish Mass in numbers of attendees.

In the early 1970s, Catholic elementary and high schools were closing. The five parishes of Crown Heights banded together to form the Crown Heights Pastoral Council to safeguard the two remaining schools. It was a time of financial hardship for St. Ignatius, with expenditures sometimes twice as great as weekly collections income.

Father Carlos reminded the parishioners that although they have been through hard times, “God wants us to be happy together as a family. We need to be grateful to be alive – this is a gift.”

Bringing his own joy, Father Carlos recently accompanied a group of parishioners to the diocesan Stewardship Day so they could learn together how to better serve the needs of St. Ignatius.

He said he was reminded of a teacher he had in the novitiate 21 years ago in Montreal. His mentor told him, “Of the many Jesuits who pass through, some are not hot or cold. They don’t have passion.” Father Carlos encouraged the parishioners to be passionate, to care about each other and to “forget divisions.”

“Everyone here is special,” Father Carlos said. “Everyone brings something unique.”

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