JAMAICA — Over the years, Shaniqua Wilson said her parents have told her about their difficult experience as black parishioners at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church when it was a predominantly white parish in the ‘50s. She said they recalled having to sit in the choir loft, and having to display their baptismal certificates to get Communion.
With that history in mind, Wilson said the simple fact that what is now St. Bonaventure-St. Benedict the Moor Parish in Jamaica held a Mass to mark the end of Black Catholic History Month shows how far the church has come.
“Back then, we would be upsetting a lot of people with this Mass we had here,” Wilson, who is a parishioner and member of the choir, told The Tablet. “Being here makes me feel uniquely blessed. It makes me feel encouraged and happy for the younger people to see people like myself and Father George [Kintiba] have a more outward or extroverted spirituality.”
University of Maryland lecturer Father Kintiba celebrated the Mass on Nov. 24 at the invitation of Wilson. In his homily, Father Kintiba spoke about some of his experiences with racism as a young, newly arrived priest in the United States.
In particular, Father Kintiba highlighted his first pastoral meeting in Chicago in 1996, when the bishop at the time asked “all minorities to stand” to welcome Father Kintiba and a fellow black priest. In response, Father Kintiba said he told a priest sitting next to him that “my mother and my father … never said I was a minority” before standing up and then telling the bishop, “I think I am in the wrong place,” and leaving.
Afterward, he told The Tablet that his story sends an important message that “in our blackness, we still have something to bring to the Church.”
“In the beginning, we were not allowed in the Church, and then we were only allowed in the back of the Church,” Father Kintiba said. “That’s why some of the orders, like mine, began training black priests so that they would be able to minister to their own people.”
Father Kintiba, who was moved to tears at one point during his homily, frequently asked the faithful to remind one another that they were there for God — that despite the racism in the Church’s history, they must show up for Mass.
“When you choose to work with the Lord, there will be many people [against that],” he told The Tablet. “That is when you must learn to walk by yourself and trust in the Lord, and he will call you to be the person that you are.”
Wilson has known Father Kintiba for 18 years. She asked him to come from Washington, D.C., knowing he would be the right, “friendly and good” face for the community at St. Bonaventure. Afterward, she said the Mass was a clear reflection of “black Catholic spirituality” with expressions of African music and “praise.”
Father Chris Piasta, pastor of St. Bonaventure-St. Benedict the Moor Parish, said he left the Mass with Father Kintiba’s “simple messages” in mind.
“‘Don’t sweat about the stupid things,’ right? These are the catchy phrases you remember,” Father Piasta said. “We don’t have time for high theology, but we definitely have a great need and hunger for memorable statements that would carry us all, and that’s what he did.”
