Parishioners at Our Lady of Africa Parish celebrated African American Heritage Month Feb. 20 with a Mass that featured readings, songs and prayers in Igbo, a language spoken in Nigeria; Twi, a language spoken in Ghana; and French, as well as parishioners wearing traditional dress.

The Mass celebrated the unity of the parish as well, said Divine Word Father Robert Kelly, the pastor. Our Lady of Africa, 613 E. Oakwood Blvd., was formed with the 2021 union of five South Side parishes: Holy Angels, the site of Our Lady of Africa Church; St. Ambrose; St. Anselm; Corpus Christi; and St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

“Now we’re in a position to lift up and celebrate the gifts of the community,” Kelly said. “We know that the journey hasn’t been easy.”

The parish hosts Masses for French speakers from around the world, including those from Haiti, Guyana and several African countries once a month, and for the Igbo and Ghanaian communities at least twice a month. In doing so, Kelly said, it is continuing the tradition of the parishes that came before in welcoming immigrants.

The main celebrant, Father Stan Chu Ilo, is a diocesan priest from Nigeria who teaches at DePaul University and served as chaplain to the Igbo community at Our Lady of Africa. He spoke about the need for Christians to forgive, even in the face of racism.

“Racism is alive,” he said. “There are people who will betray you, people who will break your heart. Someone lies to you. Someone defrauds you. Someone wants to kill someone in your family, or wants to kill you. We live in a broken world. … For any of us with African heritage, we carry the pain of the past, and it continues even today. It continues sadly in the church. We face racism wherever we go.”

While Christians are called to forgive, they are also called to claim their rights and act with dignity.

It’s something that parishioner Trish Thomas-Rawls knows well. She has attended Mass in parishes in areas without many Black Catholics and felt the eyes of the people and even the priests on her, she said, appearing to wonder if she really was Catholic.

“This is a Mass of community,” she said. “We have many cultures, and we come together in one African American culture. We have a tradition, a culture, too. We respect our elders, we respect our youth and we are trying to build a better world. We are important as Catholics. Our culture, our faith, is just as important as any European culture.”

In his homily, Ilu said that meeting hatred with hatred and violence with violence does nothing but increase the evil in the world.

People should rather look to the example of the family members of the nine people who were killed June 17, 2009, in a Bible study group at Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. While the killer — whom Ilo declined to name — never expressed remorse, one after another, in victim impact statements, the families of his victims said they forgave him.

“They said, ‘I want to hate you. I want to kill you. But God moves my heart to forgive you,’” Ilo said. “It was not something human. The human tendency is to retaliate, to give back what was given to you. They were filled with a spirit of light. They were filled with the word of God. … If we repay hatred with hatred, we multiply evil in the world. If we repay evil with evil, we multiply evil in the world. Hatred, bitterness, evil — it scars our souls. Only love can heal.”

Joe Oheri, a drummer in the Igbo choir, said events like the African American Heritage Mass are important opportunities to reflect.

“It’s vital that we spend the time to reflect on our history, the progress and the setbacks and all we have to deal with,” Oheri said. “And how we can make progress going forward. It’s an uphill battle to make progress, but we have to keep going.”