St. Hyacinth Catholic Church, Detroit, MI
Some of Detroit’s most iconic and historic Catholic churches, where the pews are barely filled every week, are receiving a much-needed boost from a new Mass Mob organization that is using Facebook and word-of-mouth to arrange for a big boost in Sunday Mass attendance.
According to the Detroit Free Press (DFP), Catholic laity in and around the Detroit area began to embrace the idea of helping their beautiful old Churches survive tough times over the past winter.
The success of the Buffalo Mass Mob in upstate New York last fall caught the attention of a Detroit Catholic school alumni club known as the Bishop Gallagher Society. The group works toward preserving memorabilia from long-closed Catholic schools. They began to publish the Mass mob idea on their Facebook page, and the interest level was so high it swelled their ranks from 700 to 2,500 members.
Meanwhile a Detroit legal assistant named Jeff Stawasz who is active in the Knights of Columbus, began contacting pastors about whether or not they’d welcome a Mass mob in their parish. Without knowing about the other efforts already underway, he started posting his ideas on Facebook.
“It’s something that’s organic and sprang up,” said Stawasz, 46, to the DFP. “You got to go to church anyways. Let’s go to one of these grand, old, century-old churches that are struggling and show our support and solidarity.”
By April, AnnaMarie Barnes, a retired real estate agent, and Thomas Mann, a financial adviser, has organized and kicked off the first Detroit Mass mob when 100 people showed up for Mass at St. Hyacinth Catholic Church in Detroit’s old Poletown neighborhood.
“I’ve been going to several of the older churches, and they blow me away,” Mann told the DFP. “The architecture is amazing. People go to Europe to see these kinds of churches.”
Barnes agrees. “My children grew up seeing the Old World architecture of these churches, but if you’re out in the suburbs, you don’t get to see it,” she said. “So we’re trying to renew the interest and give the churches some monetary help.”
Barnes and Stawasz are now collaborating on what is known as The Detroit Catholic Mass Mob. The group is still in its infancy stage, but it has big plans for the months ahead when it will visit many of the area’s oldest and finest churches.
Hopefully, each visit will provide the churches with a boost in collections, and give the struggling pastors a moral boost.
This was certainly the case at St. Hyacinth when 100 people showed up for a Mass celebrated by pastor Janusz Iwan.
As Barnes remembered: “The look on his face that day when the 100 people showed up. It was like he didn’t want to end the mass.”
The Mass mob movement is taking off with organizations now forming in Cleveland and Philadelphia. Spread the word and get one started in your area!
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