Remembering Horace

Legendary Social Justice Advocate Honored 25 Years After His Death

By Michael D.H. Newton

“Have you heard the furniture story?” one of Fr. Horace McKenna’s brother Jesuits, Fr. George Anderson, SJ, asks.

A young Fr. McKenna surveys a classroom at St. Peter Claver School

It goes like this: When McKenna was assigned to the inner-city parish of Saint Aloysius on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C., it was apparent to him that many people in the neighborhood were in need. And one of the things these people had to have—those who were lucky enough to have any kind of housing at all—was furniture. So what does McKenna do? He goes straight into the modestly furnished three-story red brick Jesuit rectory and promptly begins to give away the furniture. If the pastor had not stopped him (try and imagine that conversation), it’s possible the community residence would have ended up empty. Most likely that would have suited McKenna just fine. For him, giving all you had to serve the poor was not just a nice biblical imperative, it was the very command of Jesus Christ.

Anderson’s recounting of “the furniture story” is just one of many anecdotes recalled last May at two events in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Fr. Horace McKenna, SJ. On two separate weekends, friends and admirers of McKenna gathered at St. Aloysius and Holy Trinity churches to honor the indefatigable champion of the homeless, civil rights and social justice.

Why do so many people continue to remember McKenna and his uncompromising—some might say exasperating—manner of bearing witness to Christ? Why do they tell and retell the stories and anecdotes they know about this Jesuit priest, whose generosity and love—especially for the poorest of the poor—seemed without limits? First, because he had an eagerness to serve the poor that went far beyond the usual boundaries of what many considered prudent; second, because these stories comfort, challenge and inspire; and third, because they remind people of Jesus, who loved the poor and called them blessed.

The general outline of Father Horace Mary Bernard McKenna’s life is well-known to many, but there is much more. From the very beginning, his was a most auspicious life. Horace’s father, Charles McKenna, a devoted Roman Catholic, was a successful chemist and took an active role in the Saint Vincent de Paul Society of New York City.

McKenna was born in 1899, and at his baptism, the infant who would grow up to be nicknamed the “Apostle of the Poor,” was given the name Horace by his father. When the presiding priest objected that Horace was not a saint’s name, Charles McKenna quickly replied, “He’ll be the first.”

Years later, McKenna reminisced that his father "…was always involved in getting the wash lady’s son out of jail, or helping some Catholic institution that was afoul of the law and confused over some regulation. And his interests all seemed to be towards the poor. And I guess the instincts that I have for Saint Vincent de Paul work were inherited from him. I like to think so."

After the benevolent influence of his devout family, in particular his stepmother Julia, and the highly disciplined Jesuits who schooled him during his first years in the Society of Jesus, young McKenna was sent to teach school in 1923 in the tropical heat of Manila. There in the Philippines he absorbed an experience that changed him and turned him in the direction he would follow all his life.

McKenna was teaching boys who came mostly from well-to-do families. During breaks outside, the boys would routinely bite off an end of their piece of bread and abandon the remains when they returned to class. According to archival records in the Lauinger Library at Georgetown University, Brother San Ramón would come out every afternoon, pick up the slightly-gnawed bread, put it in a carton, and then pitch it “…over the balcony wall to the one-shirt urchins below…” If they were hungry enough to linger outside the confines of the school for half-eaten bread, one can imagine the children even fighting one another over every scrap. McKenna watched this bitter little drama repeated every day there was a crust of bread to fling over the wall.

In 1931, two years after he was ordained a priest, McKenna was named pastor of a rural, African American parish called St. Peter Claver Church, located in Ridge in southern Maryland. At the time, racial divisiveness was a way of life.

According to Sr. Marilyn Hopewell, SFCC, who grew up in Ridge and knew McKenna since childhood, he was always busy, always moving, always available. If the old Model T Ford his relatives later gave him was parked behind Saint Peter Claver Church, everyone knew, said Hopewell, that all they had to do was go around back and holler “Father McKenna! Father McKenna!” up at the tiny second story windows of his broom closet of a room, and he would hasten down the narrow stairs and appear immediately, “always smiling,” in the doorway.

McKenna worked in Ridge for 22 years, a highly visible (and sometimes controversial) advocate for African Americans, despite racial tensions in the area. He helped parishioners start four cooperatives and a credit union, re-opened the Cardinal Gibbons Institute, which was then the only black vocational high school in the country, arranged for the purchase of a new tractor—to the great relief of the plowmen who used only draft horses— taught classes, helped bring electricity to the area, re-built Saint Peter Claver Church after it burned to the ground, inspired the young (among them Sr. Hopewell, who at age 81, in the same energetic spirit of McKenna, today has founded Hopewell Academy in Clinton, Md., for grades K-8), corresponded with church officials asking for aid, and took care of all the usual duties of a parish priest.

At this point in history in the small town, it was not uncommon for some white children to hurl stones at their black counterparts on their way to school. Hopewell says there was never retaliation “because our parents worked for the white people whose children threw the stones. That’s the way it was.”

Sr. Marilyn Hopewell, SFCC

As a young girl in the second grade, Hopewell had confided to McKenna that she wanted to be a nun. McKenna encouraged Hopewell to pray the Hail Mary three times a day and ask God for guidance. He became her mentor, a relationship that flourished over decades. McKenna was instrumental in getting Hopewell enrolled in Saint Francis Academy in Baltimore when it was time for her to enter high school.

McKenna would often drive his battered Ford from Ridge to visit fellow Jesuits in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. On the return trip the car would be stuffed full of boxes and bags of donated food, clothing, anything his parishioners could use. Sometimes McKenna would offer Hopewell a ride back to Ridge from Saint Frances Academy.

Racial custom of the time forbade a black woman from riding in the front seat of a car with a white man, even a priest. So Hopewell would wedge herself into the back seat amongst the boxes and bags (the front seat was piled high as well), and off they went, the Jesuit priest, the young black student and the dangerously overburdened car, lumbering south at a dubious speed. Hopewell says they never had any conversations.

“We prayed the rosary the whole way to Ridge,” she recalls. “It takes three-and-a-half rosaries from Baltimore to Ridge.”

Throughout his time at Saint Peter Claver, McKenna would try to bring blacks and whites together in and out of church; the resistance to his attempts was sometimes fierce and occasionally dangerous. There was the time the telephone rang in the rectory one night. The voice on the line was urgent: “Get OUT of your house! The (Ku Klux) Klan is coming to kill you!” After dashing outside and presumably hiding, the priests watched several cars pull up in front of the rectory; then the occupants of the cars proceeded to shoot out all the windows of the house.

Then there are the hitchhiking stories. Hopewell explains that Father McKenna was not the one doing the hitching; he was picking up the hitchhikers.

“He did this all the time,” she says.

Sometimes his car was stolen, several times he was beaten by people he picked up, and once he was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized. But he continued picking up hitchhikers and he never quit.

“I really believe that every person is a revelation of God,” McKenna once said. “The joy of God, the love of God. I feel that the human person on the street is the appearance of Jesus Christ consumed with human needs.”

In 1953, when McKenna arrived for his next assignment at Saint Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C., the Saint Vincent de Paul Society had already been operating a “sandwich line” since 1928 for those who could not afford food. He continued this practice, and every day a long line of people stood outside the basement door, waiting to talk to McKenna. They needed food for their families, bus fare to go to work, school fees for their children, a pair of shoes, a police clearance, help with rent, help with the electric or gas bill, an eviction or a prescription. McKenna showed each person the same level of respect, calling them each by name, prefaced with Mr., Mrs. or Miss.

Students at St. Peter Claver School in Ridge, Md., where Fr. McKenna served for 22 years.

On any given day, McKenna might have been found handing out dollar bills to the needy, chatting with the homeless people up and down North Capitol Street; visiting families in the housing projects; testifying before U.S. Senate committees, writing letters—some to Congress, some to parole boards, some to emergency room doctors on behalf of an indigent patient; attending city council meetings; having breakfast with the homeless; participating in peace marches; spending part of his annual retreat living in one of the city’s shelters; and (inevitably) colliding occasionally with the will of his religious superiors. But he was always busy, always moving, always available.

Today, at least eight direct service organizations dedicated to helping the poor in Washington, D.C., owe their existence at least in part, to McKenna’s efforts or inspiration. Hundreds of people joined him to create and sustain these organizations. One even bears his name — the Father McKenna Center. Located in the basement of St. Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C., the center provides myriad services for homeless men including emergency food and shelter. Another D.C. organization inspired by McKenna is S.O.M.E. (So Others Might Eat), which began in 1970 with McKenna and several helpers handing out sandwiches. At present, S.O.M.E has a staff of more than 260 people, thousands of volunteers and serves nearly 1,000 meals a day.

In 1979, McKenna took a break from his work with Washington’s poor to return to Ridge and his beloved St. Peter Claver parish to celebrate his 50th anniversary as a Jesuit. Less than three years later McKenna died, but his legacy to the rural poor of southern Maryland and the urban poor of Washington, D.C., continues to flourish in the service efforts he started and in the stories so many continue to tell and remember.

Michael D.H. Newton is a freelance writer and a
parishoner at Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C.