A historic Catholic parish established in 1926 is preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary on Oct. 18. Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Plateau, Alabama, has been serving the Catholic community in Africatown since its founding.
Africatown is a historic community located just north of Mobile, Alabama, founded by West African survivors of the Clotilda — the last known slave ship to illegally transport captive people to the United States. While Africatown is known for its major Baptist landmarks, the different denominations located in the area came together for an ecumenical event Sept. 22–24.
As part of the celebration leading up to the 100th anniversary — which will include a special Mass, music, food, and fellowship — the Archdiocese of Mobile hosted a tent revival in collaboration with all the churches of Africatown. The theme’s revival was “Be Made Whole.”
Father Victor Ingalls is the pastor of seven parishes in the Archdiocese of Mobile, a majority of which are historically Black Catholic churches, as well as one Hispanic church and another Native American church.
Ingalls explained in an interview with EWTN News that the Black Catholic community has a long tradition of holding revivals.
“Itʼs really like having a Lenten mission or Advent mission, but kind of infused with Black culture … and it takes the best of Black culture and fuses it with the best of Catholicism,” he said.
He pointed out that one of the staples of these revivals is that they have “always had an ecumenical flavor.”
After hosting a successful revival earlier in the year, several non-Catholic ministers, who are friends of Ingalls’, asked him when he was planning to host a revival in Mobile. He began to pray about it and met with those who suggested it to see what they could come up with. They suggested hosting it in Africatown seeing as Our Mother of Mercy Parish — located in Africatown — was coming up on its 100th anniversary.
Roughly 500 people of different denominations showed up for the tent revival in Africatown. In line with the theme, the first night’s talks focused on being made whole as an individual, the second night covered being made whole as a community, and the last evening discussed being made whole as the body of Christ.
Ingalls said he believes ecumenical events like this are important for the Church today because they are a response to Jesus’ prayer in John 17.
“I believe because of what Jesus Christ said, it is our disunity as Christians that keeps the world from believing,” Ingalls said. “Our disunity is a condemnation against ourselves. We condemn ourselves and we undercut our efforts to try to spread the Gospel by being a dysfunctional family.”
He added: “Thereʼs a reason why people donʼt take Christians seriously and itʼs because thereʼs 40,000 different flavors of us. Itʼs hard to take that seriously. It’s like, ‘Hey, come be a part of this.’ Theyʼre like, ‘Well, Iʼve already got enough drama and dysfunction and division in my life, why would I want to be part of that?’”
Ingalls said he hopes those who attended the tent revival took with them that “it does not matter your circumstance as an individual or as part of any organization or even the Church, you can be made whole by Jesus Christ.”
“Everyone loves to talk about how divided we are these days and how things are getting worse and people are so isolated and divided and depressed and anxious and we just addressed it and said, ‘Well, weʼre trying to look at all these problems, but thereʼs only one real solution and his name is Jesus Christ.’”
“It does not matter how messy your personal life is, it does not matter how messy your relationship with your family, your friends and your neighbors is … it is not beyond the reach of Jesus Christ,” Ingalls emphasized. “He can make you whole. He can make us whole. And just the fact that nearly 500 people came and sat together under a tent in Africatown itself was a testimony to what God can do.”