Four Priests and 40 Members of Historic Anglican Parish will Enter Catholic Church Sunday through New Anglican Ordinariate for the United States
Cardinal-designate Edwin F. O’Brien, Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, announced today that Mount Calvary Church, a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and located in Baltimore, will be received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church through the newly-created Anglican Ordinariate for the United States.
Father Jason Catania, Mount Calvary’s Pastor, informed the Archdiocese that it has reached an agreement with the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, effectively ending the parish’s 169-year history with the Anglican Church. In October 2010, the parish’s vestry unanimously voted to leave the Episcopal Church and to become an Anglican-use Catholic parish.
Mount Calvary’s reception into the Catholic Church marks the second such Anglican community in Baltimore to do so. In 2009, Cardinal-designate O’Brien welcomed 10 Episcopal nuns and their chaplain to the Archdiocese. In 2011, the nuns, members of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, were welcomed into a newly-erected Roman Catholic diocesan priory of the same name. Their chaplain, Father Warren Tanghe, was ordained a Catholic priest this June.
“The steady flow of Mount Calvary ‘alumni’ to Rome, combined with the decision by the All Saints Sisters and the publication of Anglicanorum coeitbus, made it clear to the people of the parish that our future lies with the Catholic Church,” Father Catania said.
Mount Calvary will continue to worship at its Eutaw Street church. A settlement was recently reached between Mt. Calvary and the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland that will enable the parish to retain the property.
Mount Calvary is expected to be the first Anglican-use community in the United States to enter the Catholic Church through the new Anglican Ordinariate since it was announced January 1, 2012. The head of the new Ordinariate, Fr. Jeffrey N. Steenson, will receive Father Catania, his fellow priests and parishioners on January 22 at Mt. Calvary.
“The ordinariate stems from the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus issued by Pope Benedict XVI in November 2009 that authorized the creation of ‘ordinariates,’ geographic regions similar to dioceses but typically national in scope,” according to a United States Conference of Catholic Bishops November 2011 press release. At this time the only other Ordinariate exists in the United Kingdom.