Bishop names him director of Office for Black Catholics
In September 2021, Msgr. Walter C. Barrett Jr., at the time pastor of St. Joseph, Hampton, and St. Mary Star of the Sea, Fort Monroe, wrote to Bishop Barry C. Knestout letting him know that he wanted to retire in 2022. He did, effective, July 1.
“I was told by an older priest, who is now with God, that I will know in my stomach, know in my belly, when it is time to retire,” the priest said. “When I turned 70 in 2017 — the age at which priests can retire — I didn’t sense that was the time, but this is the time.”
However, this past April, Msgr. Barrett received an email from Father Michael Boehling, the diocese’s vicar general, informing him that Bishop Knestout wanted to meet with him regarding the directorship of the Office for Black Catholics (OBC). The position has been vacant since the death of Deacon Charles Williams in January.
“I suspect, in light of my age and in light of what I was asked to do, the bishop wants me to be a part of a search committee for a director,” he said. “One of the things Father Boehling said in the email is that Bishop Knestout knows I have a love for the Church and a love for the Black Catholic community. That’s how my name surfaced.”
Msgr. Barrett said that the bishop “painted the big picture” of the concerns he’s facing and which the OBC can help him address, including social justice.
“We live in a culture where our people are divided like the rest of the world. This I can understand as a pastor. You have people who are on different sides of an issue in the same congregation,” he said. “It is the pastor’s responsibility and the bishop’s responsibility to keep the family together, so the people are not fighting in the pews.”
The priest explained why he accepted the part-time position, effective Tuesday, Aug. 2. He plans to be in the Pastoral Center Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week.
“What we face in our parishes is a microcosm of what a bishop has to face in the diocese. That’s a heck of a vocation. That’s why I said yes because I want to help as much as I can,” he said.
Church must be welcoming
Listening, according to Msgr. Barrett, is going to be a critical part of what he will do as director of OBC.
“(I will) listen not only to the bishop, but to the clergy and lay leaders in our very diverse and non-monolithic Black Catholic community,” he said.
Msgr. Barrett acknowledged that Black Catholics have had experiences of the Catholic faith that were “not favorable in some instances.”
“There’s a generation that was very tolerant and put up with a whole lot, and then there’s a younger generation that is not tolerant, a generation that is used to more than three channels on TV,” he said. “We talk about cafeteria Catholicism, but there is a generation that is looking beyond the appeal of Catholicism and is looking elsewhere for meaning in life. They’re not going to a church where they sit in a pew where someone moves over because of the color of their skin.”
The priest said that Black Catholics felt they were “adopted children, the red-haired stepchild,” but certainly not monolithic.
“We’re all over the place. Some feel very comfortable in a predominantly African American parish. Some feel the opposite; they want to be in a racially diverse parish because we live in a racially diverse culture,” he said, referring to a March 2022 Pew Research survey that reported “just 25% of Black Catholics who attend Mass at least a few times a year report that they typically go to a Mass where most other attendees are Black.”
Even though Black Catholics have had negative experiences with the Church, Msgr. Barrett does not see that as an excuse to give up on the New Evangelization.
“We’d like to reclaim some of the former Catholics. We’d also like to invite other people into the Church,” he said, adding a caution: “But people are not going to come into a church if they don’t feel welcome.”
The priest noted that according to the summary of the synodal listening sessions in the diocese, “Every parish saw itself as warm and welcoming, and that is not true. But that is the way people see themselves. They’re warm and welcoming to the people who look like them and who they feel comfortable with. But they’re not as warm and welcoming to someone who is the ‘other.’”
Nonetheless, he is hopeful. When he recently celebrated the sacrament of matrimony at St. Peter Pro-Cathedral, Richmond, he took time to sit in the balcony beforehand.
“It brought back memories when I sat in that loft where African Americans sat (because of segregation). We’re far from that now,” the priest said. “There’s much more comingling, and people are talking about race and other subjects that were taboo in times past, so I’m hopeful.”
Parishes — the extended family
In 1967, then-seminarian Walter C. Barrett Jr. served the Mass at which Father Clarence Watkins was the first Black priest ordained for the Diocese of Richmond. Eight years later, Msgr. Barrett became the diocese’s second Black priest. For the next 35 years, he would serve in predominantly African American parishes: parochial vicar at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Norfolk (1975-1977); pastor of St. Gerard, Roanoke (1977-1985); pastor (1985-1992) and rector (1997-2000) at the Basilica of the St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception; and Holy Rosary, Richmond (2001-2011).
“Not only did I offer the sacraments, but I found myself, not just in Roanoke, but in Norfolk and Richmond, going to city jails and correctional institutions, the courts, as a character witness,” he said. “Whereas being pastor of a (Peninsula) cluster that is more racially diverse, with fewer African Americans, that was a very rare experience. In my 11 years in the Peninsula Cluster, I’ve gone to city jail three times in 11 years. In the past, I was going four to five times a year. That speaks a lot about how the African American relationship with the criminal justice system is different.”
As he reflected upon his parish ministry, Msgr. Barrett repeatedly referred to family.
“What stands out for me is that I’m surprised by how impactful the presence of a priest on the life of a person or family can be,” he said. “I know that married couples especially have been very complimentary to my lifestyle as a celibate priest. The parishes I pastored became an extended family. Seeing them as extended family has been very rewarding.”
Msgr. Barrett noted his focus on family has changed.
“In my training, your own biological family was always considered secondary to the needs of the Church. That’s the way it’s always been. It was not until my parents began to age gracefully that I began to focus on the biological family. Now that I am at this point in life, I’ve observed that when a priest is ill, it’s his biological family and his parishioners who are there in the hospital with him,” he said. “Families are important — so important. I’ve always felt that I have been successful as a parish priest because I see the parish as an extended family.”
Listen, be respectful
Asked the qualities of a good pastor, Msgr. Barrett highlighted listening.
“They need to listen to their people, they need to get to know their people. Respect the local customs and traditions of the people,” he said. “In the last 11 years, I’ve had 14 parochial vicars, and the international priests are much more respectful of the local customs and peculiarities.
He continued, “Our home-grown priests need to take more time to respect local customs. They don’t. They want to change things immediately, and people find that disruptive and not respectful of their own sense of ownership. The Church isn’t just the priest with the collar. There’s a whole community.”
When Msgr. Barrett was assigned to the Peninsula Peninsula Cluster in 2011, he said he saw race.
“It dawned on me that the congregation was no longer predominantly Black. It was a sea of white faces, and that sea of white faces over the course of time became melted into personalities because then I no longer saw race,” he said. “I saw this particular person whose mother I buried and that particular person, a couple whose wedding I celebrated or that child whom I baptized. I began to see personalities.”
He added, “There isn’t anything wrong with seeing race because we are different racially, but when I left that cluster, I left family just as I left family at other parishes, too.”
Msgr. Barrett said that listening was important because people “were all over the place.”
“I said to myself I wanted to buy a T-shirt that said, ‘I survived the Peninsula Cluster’ because there was a whole lot of diversity there and a whole lot of division. It takes a while to come together but that’s what people are looking for — stability. That’s what the Church offers them,” he said. “Listening and getting to know the people. Respecting them. Out of that grows love.”
What it’s like to be pastor of your home parish
When asked what it was like to be assigned to his home parish, Holy Rosary, Richmond, in 2001, Msgr. Walter C. Barrett Jr. exclaimed with a laugh, “Oh, dear God!”
Having returned from sabbatical in Rome at the end of 2000, Msgr. Barrett was in residence at St. Augustine, Richmond. He knew Bishop Walter F. Sullivan wanted him to become pastor of Holy Rosary.
“I did not want to come back to the parish where I used to be a paper boy and altar boy. My family was there. It was just too personal,” he recalled.
However, at one of the Masses Msgr. Barrett attended in Rome, the Gospel was John 21:15-19 in which Jesus tells Peter, “… Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”
“I knew then I was going to be assigned to a parish I did not want to go to. I felt that in my heart,” the priest said. “So, when the bishop asked me, ‘Would you—?’ before he could finish, I answered, ‘Yes, bishop.’ He was surprised because he knew I did not want to go back home.”
Noting that he and many of the parishioners were baby boomers, Msgr. Barrett said a priest-sociologist told him that it would be a good match.
“The people were very supportive of me,” he said, “but there were some people who said to me they wished I had not been assigned there for they feared changes that would not be what they had in mind.”
Msgr. Barrett described the parish during his youth as “a much more traditional African American parish.”
“When I came back, I was an archconservative coming back to a very liberal parish. That’s the way some people saw it,” he said. “We worked some kinks out, and the challenge for them is that I do things by the book, and the priests who had been there before didn’t do things by the book. They were ‘loosey goosey,’ as Bishop Sullivan would say.”
The parish son said parishioners “were and are very friendly” and that the assignment was a “good fit.”
“I stayed there for 10 years. It was in the 10th year I could feel in my stomach it was time to go. I had done all I could do,” he recalled. “What I didn’t know until almost the end of my term when someone told me was that my mother had prayed that her son would be assigned there. I never knew that. She never told me that. Someone else brought it to her attention. She had forgotten it.”
He added, “That was not on my list of places I wanted to go, but I guess God wanted me to be there, so I went.”
— Brian T. Olszewski
Those who have led the Office for Black Catholics
When Bishop Barry C. Knestout appointed Msgr. Walter C. Barrett Jr. to be director of the Office for Black Catholics (OBC) on Aug. 2, 2022, the recently retired pastor became the first priest to head the office that Bishop Walter F. Sullivan established July 1, 1980.
The first director was Marianist Brother Matthias Newell, who served until 1982. That year, the bishop appointed Sister Cora Marie Billings, a Sister of Mercy, to head the office, which she led for 25 years.
She was succeeded by Dawn Crutchfield, a member of St. Gerard, Roanoke, who led the office from 2007 until 2009. In 2010, Pam Harris, a member of Holy Rosary, Richmond, became director and served until 2018. Deacon Charles Williams, whose diaconal ministry included the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and St. Paul, Richmond, was appointed director of the OBC in 2019 and served until his death on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022.