‘Reverently awe-inspiring’: The story behind twin Catholic parishes in Virginia, Maryland

Richmond, Va., Dec 15, 2024 / 07:00 am

Catholics who have spent time in both Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia, may be unaware that two near-identical parishes exist in both cities, both built by the same architect-priest and both offering an ideal of what their designer called a “quiet, recollected, prayerful, somber, sanctified” atmosphere of peace and worship. 

St. Benedict Church in Baltimore and St. Benedict Church in Richmond were both constructed by Father Michael McInerney, OSB, a monk at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina who lived from 1877–1963. 

By the time of his death at age 85, McInerney had designed and built more than 200 churches as well as numerous hospitals, convents, and other works. Among his more notable creations was Sacred Heart College in Belmont, North Carolina, as well as works at his alma mater Belmont College. He is interred at Belmont Abbey. 

Though the priest’s works range in style and scope from Gothic to Art Deco, the two churches in Baltimore and Richmond are strikingly similar. Both were dedicated within just a few years of each other — the Richmond parish in 1929 and the Baltimore parish in 1933 — and both have remained active for nearly a century. 

Baltimore: ‘A spectacular house of worship’

In his history of the parish, local author John Potyraj describes the Baltimore St. Benedict’s as a “church built with nickels,” with the parish having “squirreled away a considerable amount” of money in the early 20th century prior to the building’s construction. 

A school, a rectory, a convent, and a “social center” rounded out what became a considerable Catholic campus in Baltimore’s Mill Hill neighborhood. 

Potyraj noted that McInerney regularly “scaled the scaffold” during construction of the parish “to inspect the masons’ work and provide instruction” and that the priest was “uncompromising” in ensuring that his architectural vision was carried out. 

The interior of the church offers “ample provision of natural light” within a “monastic atmosphere,” presenting modest ornamentation that does not “distract from the main purpose of the design” as a house of worship. 

The nave and sanctuary of St. Benedict Church are seen in Baltimore. Credit: St. Benedict Church

Among the structure’s more striking features is a towering crucified Christ on the building’s face, one that overlooks the front portion of the property and which is embellished by a rose window. 

The "Holy Rood" is seen on the front of St. Benedict Church in Baltimore. Credit: St. Benedict Church

Also notable are the parish’s carved columns of polished pink granite, providing “the primary support of this spectacular house of worship” that symbolize the “pillars of the divine Church.”

An undated photo shows the carved granite columns in St. Benedict Church, Baltimore. Credit: St. Benedict Church

The Baltimore St. Benedict’s was an active parish for nearly a century, though last year the Archdiocese of Baltimore discontinued all Masses and sacramental activity there after its pastor was removed following a scandal over sex abuse accusations and hush money.

On its website the parish says it continues to operate as St. Benedict Neighborhood Center. Its “Benedict’s Pantry” remains an active food pantry that regularly feeds hundreds of people. 

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Ministry member Charlene Sola told CNA that the community has “started a new chapter” and is “excited about the future.” 

Though the parish is no longer an active Catholic church, the impressive, reverent building designed by McInerney still stands, giving testament to what parishioners at the building’s 50th anniversary described as a “home” where “the Father will hear us best of all and bless our prayers.” 

Richmond: ‘Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus’

About 150 miles to the south, St. Benedict Church in Richmond is still an active parish — and visitors from the Baltimore church could be forgiven for thinking they’d stepped into their own parish. 

The roots of the Richmond church date to 1911 when monks from Belmont Abbey opened up a boys high school — Benedictine College Preparatory — and an attached parish in what is now the city’s Museum District. 

An elementary school soon followed, while in 1922 a group of Benedictine nuns opened up the all-girls St. Gertrude High School just a few hundred feet away. 

The two prep schools have since moved out to Goochland County and are united under a single institution, the Benedictine Schools of Richmond. Yet the parish started by the monks over a century ago still remains, guided by the Benedictine motto “Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus,” or “that in all things God may be glorified.”

The church, dedicated in 1929 just several weeks before the catastrophic stock market crash that year, bears many of the hallmarks of McInerney’s style and shares many features with its Baltimore cousin. 

The nave and sanctuary are seen at St. Benedict Church in Richmond, Virginia. Credit: Daniel Payne/CNA

Among them is a large rose window on the front facade; though missing the towering figure of Christ crucified, the rose window itself is strikingly similar, including minor statuary flanking its bottom edge.

The rose window is seen on the facade of St. Benedict Church, Richmond, Virginia. Credit: Daniel Payne/CNA

The carved pink granite columns are also nearly identical to their Baltimore counterparts, including their being topped with liturgical symbols as they run the length of the nave. 

Carved columns are seen in St. Benedict Church in Richmond, Virginia. Credit: Daniel Payne/CNA

Also of striking similarity are the two reredos — decorative backings — of the respective altars. Both are of unmistakable resemblance, though the Richmond reredos has been embellished with a marble bas-relief of the Twelve Apostles, while the Baltimore church retains a more simplified blind arcade of brick arches. 

The Baltimore parish, meanwhile, boasts a towering high altar, while the Richmond church displays a shorter and narrower arch stretching over the tabernacle. 

The two altar reredos are seen in St. Benedict Church, Baltimore, Maryland (top) and St. Benedict Church in Richmond, Virginia. Credit: St. Benedict Church; Daniel Payne/CNA

Father Gilbert Sunghera, who previously served as an associate professor in the school of architecture at the University of Detroit Mercy, told CNA that duplicate parishes are “not that common but [it] has happened.”

“I am about to work on a school chapel in Akron that has a twin in Toledo,” he said. “And Detroit had a number of fairly simple churches that were all similar and called Gumbelton Barns after [former Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton], done at a time when churches needed to open quickly.”

Writing on the construction of Catholic churches, McInerney said years ago that a Catholic building “should present an exterior, simple, strong, reserved, dignified, and bearing upon its front, some symbol of its sacredness as a temple of the Almighty.”

The interior, meanwhile, “should possess a religious atmosphere, breathing the Spirit of God: quiet, recollected, prayerful, somber, sanctified, filled with peace and benediction in the presence of the Lord in his holy tabernacle.”

“It should be reverently awe inspiring,” he wrote, ”another place of Calvary where Jesus is lifted up before the eyes of the multitude and, again and again, made a victim of sacrifice for the sins of the world.”