The parishioner was letting Father Evan Ponton have it, face-to-face; more like a tirade in a saloon than a church. The doors would soon be closing on a beloved Baltimore parish – the Shrine of the Little Flower at Belair Road and Brendan Avenue since 1926 – and the man was livid.The confrontation occurred after the Archdiocese announced in late May that the number of parishes in and near Baltimore City would be cut from 61 to 23. The Shrine was on the list – along with five others in the once nearly monolithically Catholic northeast quadrant of the city.A farewell Mass was said Sunday, October 13, and the 900 capacity sanctuary was packed for the first time since the 2021 retirement Mass for longtime pastor, the Rev. Michael J. Orchik.Named for St. Therese of Lisieux [1873-1897], a French nun who died of tuberculosis, one of the most popular saints in the history of the Church. In her writings, she referred to herself as “the little flower of Jesus in the garden of God.”You can’t keep it going“The Shrine” was once among the largest parishes – if not the largest – in the city with more than 12,000 members in the 1960s. Overflow seating in the basement was necessary on any given Sunday from the 1950s through the 1970s. During that time, enrollment in the parish school exceeded 2,000 students. The school closed in 2005.In recent years, a typical weekend – Masses on Saturday evening and Sunday morning – drew about 60.“And many of those are coming in from the county” to worship at their childhood parish, said Father Ponton, 35, associate pastor. “You can’t keep a place this big going with 60 people.”Of his encounter with the furious man, Father Ponton said: “We were lining up at the back of the church to begin Mass. I noticed an agitated person being disruptive and asked if I could assist with anything.“He told me, ‘You don’t know anything and you don’t care. You’re just a hired hand to do the bishop’s bidding,'” most likely referring to Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, who has overseen the closing process.The layman then tossed a stack of bulletins across the floor as the opening hymn began. Though Father Ponton understood the man’s feelings – sadness and anger leavened by moments of acceptance had settled over the congregation – the cleric took offense at being called a “hired hand.”“That phrase is hurtful to priests,” said Father Ponton. “It immediately calls to mind a passage from the gospel very close to a priest’s heart where Jesus contrasts the Good Shepherd who knows his flock by name and leads and feeds and lays down his life [for them] in perilous times. The hired hand runs away and abandons the flock.”The insult was particularly onerous to Father Ponton.  A year-and-a-half ago, in the thick of Archdiocese “listening sessions” to determine if any churches might be spared (a few were), he left a flourishing Catholic community in Anne Arundel County.“The Shrine” was filled for the last time at the October 13, 2024 farewell Mass Credit: Fred LohnThere, he was assigned to St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park – which celebrates Mass for some 2,000 people each weekend – and was the chaplain at Archbishop Spalding High School.More than 800 for a final MassJust a few years out of seminary, he wanted to minister in the city – the first archdiocese in the United States, established in 1789 – a town once so indelibly Catholic that many parochial school kids grew up thinking everyone was Catholic.“Unless they were public,” said Donna Mislak, a 1972 graduate of the Shrine school, using a phrase Catholic kids once used for their peers in public school. Mislak’s German-American mother’s family began at the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown, which has been revived by a wave of Latino immigration in southeast Baltimore. Her family now belongs to Our Lady of Grace in Parkton.On Sunday, Mislak returned to the Shrine – along with more than more than 800 others – for the farewell Mass where she grew up in the 1960s. She hadn’t been back in more than a decade. The church remains beautiful, she said, though the surrounding neighborhood has not fared as well.“It was fabulous but overwhelming. I cried,” she said. “It was like the end of my childhood when I walked to school there in my little brown uniform and beanie. I felt like I’d lost my parents all over again.”That’s the kind of heartache, Father Ponton said, he’s been working with since the announcement was made.“Sometimes I feel myself doing parish-wide grief ministry,” said Father Ponton, a bass player who admires Stanley Clarke. “Seeing [the resentment] through the lens of grief helps my own emotional health. “My goal in coming here was not to fix the city or fix parishes or people but just have solidarity and empathy with them in a time of profound loss,” he said. “As Christians we are not people who grieve without hope. This is where we are. Can we do what we need to do to move forward?”The man who threw the church bulletins across the floor has not apologized, said Father Ponton, but others who had harsh words with him have.The other churches closing in Northeast Baltimore are Saint Francis of Assisi, less than a mile away from the Shrine, its school remaining open; St. Anthony of Padua, two miles away on Frankford Avenue; St. Dominic on Harford Road, once the anchor of Hamilton, two-and-a-half miles away; Most Precious Blood, two miles away near Moravia Road; and Blessed Sacrament in the Pen Lucy neighborhood on Old York Road, about three miles away.All will be merged with St. Matthew at 5401 Loch Raven Boulevard, one of the most vibrant and progressive parishes in the city, a place, say those who did not feel welcome in more conservative Catholic communities, have made it their home. Father Ponton will be serve at St. Matthews at least until the mergers are sorted out.Demographics led to declineWhy are so many parishes going dark within three miles of one another?The area once boomed with tens of thousands of Catholics moving away from their original neighborhoods in southeast Baltimore, from Little Italy to the edge of Dundalk. Those moves to what was still farmland in the early 20th century commenced an era of different Catholic ethnic groups – German, Irish, Italian and Polish – worshiping together as they did not in the more segregated parishes of their youth.As the faithful continued to leave the city for the suburbs and beyond, the churches they left behind boomed no more. In the 21st century, it’s been reported that the average American family moves up to ten times. In the old days, a neighborhood rowhouse would remain in a family for three generations, sometimes more.Joseph M. Martenczuk, 43, coordinated music and liturgy at the Shrine, a place he loves dearly.“I grew up in Little Flower,” he said, describing the parish as a neighborhood, once the way that Realtors described Baltimore communities in classified ads: Two story brick rowhouse in Saint Ursula; single home with big yard, St. Mary’s Govans and the like.“My family came out of Holy Rosary and moved to Chesterfield Avenue in the 1940s when it was farmland,” said Martenczuk.Holy Rosary near Patterson Park where former Pope John Paul II [1920-2005] celebrated Mass in 1976 when he was Cardinal Karol Wojtyła. The Fells Point/Canton waterfront was so heavily Polish through the late 19th century and most of the 20th that three Catholic churches were built to serve them: Holy Rosary, St. Casimir at O’Donnell Street and Lakewood Avenue and Saint Stanislaus close enough to Thames Street to hear the tugboat whistles.St. Casimir will continue, the fate of Holy Rosary is undecided at the moment and St. Stan’s, closed a quarter-century ago, is now a yoga studio. “A lot of people are hurt and grieving at Little Flower and I’m praying they find their way,” said Martenczuk. “I’m sure we’ll all find other homes …”The church and school of the Shrine of the Little Flower on Belair Road were once filled to overflowing Credit: Brigette PaffenbackThe first insallment in “A City to Come,” Rafael Alvarez’s series of the impacts of church closings in Baltimore, can be found here. Rafael Alvarez was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith at St. Clement in Lansdowne in 1958. He graduated Mount Saint Joseph High School in 1976 and Loyola College of Baltimore in 1980. Has your parish been closed? Email Alvarez and tell him about it: [email protected]