(National Catholic Reporter. Rhina Guidos).
Not far from a plaque marking it as a place where the nation’s first Catholic president worshiped, there’s now a less auspicious marker outside Holy Trinity Catholic Church, in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, recalling its past in the dark history of the country. “Hundreds of Black parishioners left Holy Trinity,” one of its four painful paragraphs explains, “because of the ongoing segregation and discrimination they found here.” On June 19, a descendant of one of those families helped unveil the marker, which also asks for forgiveness “for these sins of racism and the pain they have caused.” “This truth is ugly and painful,” said Linda Gray, whose ancestors were among those who became part of Epiphany Catholic Church, the new parish Black families founded, also in Georgetown, after they left Trinity in the 1920s because of the racism they experienced there. “The truth hurts, it does, but the truth also has the power to heal.” On the steps of Trinity, Gray talked about how those who left did so “with no place to go,” but with the promise that God would help.