BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Thérèse of Lisieux was only 24 in the summer of 1897, but she knew her death was imminent.
Still, two months before she died from tuberculosis, the future saint assured that her good work was only getting started when she famously said, “I will spend my heaven in doing good upon earth.”
Some 20 years later, the priest who would go on to become Msgr. Bernard J. Quinn took her up on that promise.
He frequently relied on St. Thérèse’s intercession, starting in the 1920s, as he struggled to create the first real home for black Catholics in the Diocese of Brooklyn — St. Peter Claver Church, which, since 2007, has been part of St. Martin de Porres Parish in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Ultimately, in 1925, Msgr. Quinn organized a special “Little Flower” novena on May 17 to honor St. Thérèse’s canonization. Now, 100 years later, the parish will recreate that novena on May 17-31, at St. Peter Claver Church, 29 Claver Place in Brooklyn.
“We’re literally doing what Quinn did 100 years ago,” said Gerald Foley, the seminarian in residence at the parish.
Foley noted that in addition to honoring St. Thérèse’s canonization with the novena, Msgr. Quinn was also “thanking her for her help in all of his work with black Catholics. He placed every one of his apostolates in her hands whenever he encountered an obstacle.”
“Now we’re asking her to help get him canonized,” Foley said.
In 2008, then-Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio opened Msgr. Quinn’s cause for canonization, Foley said.
Msgr. Quinn — born in 1888 in Newark, New Jersey — was a young priest in Brooklyn when, during the early 1900s, he sought permission to create a mission church for black Catholics.
While parishes were popping up all over Brooklyn and Queens to accommodate influxes of Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, black Catholics had no parish of their own, so many ferried across the East River to Manhattan to attend more hospitable parishes.
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Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the then-Father Quinn, a group called the “Colored Catholic Club” (CCC) petitioned then-Diocese of Brooklyn Bishop Charles McDonnell for a black Catholic parish. According to historical accounts, the CCC’s petition document was lost at the diocesan offices. The group subsequently disbanded.
Msgr. Quinn’s own request to start a mission church was postponed while he served in the U.S. Army as a chaplain during World War I.
Although a non-combatant with troops in France, he was severely injured in a poisonous gas attack that permanently damaged his lungs. But while there, the priest found a copy of the future saint’s autobiography, “The Story of a Soul.”
After the Armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, Quinn stayed in France until June 1919. He was reassigned to be the chaplain for a military hospital near the birthplace of Thérèse in Alençon, France. One day, he visited the home.
The caretakers, an older couple, agreed to let him stay in the house, and the dining room became the priest’s sleeping quarters, Foley said.
Msgr. Quinn absorbed how Thérèse, who became a cloistered Carmelite nun in Lisieux, had been filled with God’s grace and love. These gifts inspired her to devise the so-called “Little Way” — a simple but practical blueprint for spirituality.
“I feel that my mission is soon to begin,” she said on July 17, 1897, “to make others love God as I do, to teach others my ‘little way.’ ”
When he returned from the war, Msgr. Quinn reminded Bishop McDonnell about his request to launch an apostolate for African and Caribbean Americans.
The bishop finally gave his blessing to appeal to other parishes for donations to help establish a parish. Meanwhile, the priest connected with the founder of the former CCC, a Jamaican immigrant and postal worker named Jules DeWeever.
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Prayers for Thérèse’s intercession intensified, as Msgr. Quinn worked with DeWeever to build the future St. Peter Claver Parish with members of the old CCC.
They were soon followed by many more black Catholics pouring into the diocese from the Caribbean and southern U.S. states where the “Jim Crow” system of segregation persisted.
Msgr. Quinn, DeWeever, and their supporters raised the money to buy a dilapidated, former Protestant church, which they restored. It was dedicated as St. Peter Claver Parish by Bishop Thomas Molloy on Feb. 26, 1922.
The apostolate’s work continued, as Msgr. Quinn built an orphanage for black children on Long Island and rebuilt it twice following arson attacks by racists.
Msgr. Quinn also created more than a dozen black missions, including one which today is St. Benedict the Moor Parish in Jamaica, Queens.
And at each step, Foley said, the pastor prayed for intercession from St. Thérèse, knowing yet another of her famous quotations: “No one will invoke me without obtaining an answer.”
Catholics packed the parish’s first novena for St. Thérèse in 1925. Many, Foley said, experienced enormous spiritual growth via the saint’s “little way.”
The novena became so popular, Msgr. Quinn agreed to expand it from the traditional nine, Foley said. But even after May 31, people still wanted it. Realizing he couldn’t hold a novena each day, Msgr. Quinn agreed to set aside Mondays for it.
“By September, 10,000 people every Monday were pouring into this church,” Foley said.
He added that within five years, an estimated 2 million people had attended the Monday novena. High attendance numbers continued until around 1950, 10 years after Msgr. Quinn died of stomach cancer. The weekly Monday novena is still held at the church, but with far fewer people.
The upcoming 14-day novena will be held at 7:30 p.m. on weekdays and at 7 p.m. on weekends. Each service will replicate the original 1925 half-hour novena with veneration of the saint’s relics.
The first session on May 17 will include Holy Hour with Eucharistic adoration and benediction from Bishop Robert Brennan. A similar format with adoration and benediction will be held on the final session on May 31, with Bishop Emeritus DiMarzio presiding.
Father Alonzo Cox, pastor of St. Peter Claver, is also the postulator for the canonization of Msgr. Quinn. The upcoming novena, he said, is an opportunity, “just to gather for prayer, to thank God for the gift of Msgr. Quinn, the gift of St. Thérèse, and to pray for his canonization.”