Affliate Priest

  
Fr. Steven Giovangelo came to St. Francis as a volunteer “affiliate priest” earlier this year after retiring in September 2009. At the time of his retirement he had been rector of All Saints Church in Indianapolis.   He has been attending St. Francis during the interim period at least twice a month.

Fr. Steve was born and raised about a mile west of downtown Chicago. He grew up in the Roman Catholic Church and attended De Paul University in Chicago and the University of Albuquerque, (formerly a Catholic college) in the city of that name in New Mexico.

One of his classmates belonged to an Episcopal Church a few blocks from the University and invited Steve to a Sunday service. Steve began attending that parish. A year after graduating, he was received into The Episcopal Church in The Diocese of Chicago.   “The best way to grow a church, I am convinced, is to invite someone to church with you. It worked for me and in every parish I’ve served I’ve told folks that if they want to grow their parish, invite someone to go with you.”

After graduation, he worked for several years as an admin. asst. at the main library of the Chicago campus of The University of Illinois and was active in a parish just north of downtown Chicago, The Church of the Ascension, one of the historically famous Anglo-catholic parishes in the U.S.   

He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL in 1974 and graduated with the M. Div. in 1977. He was ordained a priest in 1978.   He served for some years in two parishes in the Chicago suburbs, first as an assistant and later as rector.

In 1985, he moved to The Diocese of Los Angeles to be geographically closer to his parents and his sister and her family who had relocated there. Fr. Steve served as an assistant or rector in several parishes in communities around LA. He and Mother Kate Cullinane knew each other from those years. By coincidence, they both ended up in INDY some years later at different times.

In 1996 he accepted an invitation from Bishop John Spong (now ret.) of the Diocese of Newark, NJ to take on the challenge of revitalizing a small inner city church in Union City, NJ which had dwindled to less than a dozen parishioners. “Bishop Spong’s commitment to the parish and to me, together with the financial and moral support of the Diocese was solid,” Steve said. “I don’t think I could have taken on that challenge without the active support of Bishop Spong and the Diocese,” he remarked.

At the bottom of the Victorian Gothic church’s steps was a busy bus stop into Manhattan, just ten minutes away across the Hudson River through the Lincoln Tunnel. “That bus stop and lots of walking around through those old dense and noisy neighborhoods proved to be the key ingredients to the growth and development of that little parish,” he said.

Within a year the parish began to grow in numbers, stewardship and visibility in the community.   Since the old brownstone rectory was next door to the church, he ‘hung out’ every morning outside the church at the bus stop during the rush hour and got to know people.

One new parishioner who joined was a young mezzo in the Metropolitan Opera chorus. Since there had not been a choir for many years, she offered to sing from time to time and brought several other musicians with her. In time, an FBI agent, a car dealership manager, a cop and some local high and elementary school teachers all joined.

“The piece de resistance in terms of the diversity of members was when an IRS agent joined the parish; everyone “ran for the hills” as a joke when he was received by the Bishop into the Church at the parish Confirmation service when the Bishop came,” Steve laughed.  

“One older couple who had lived in the neighborhood for years but whose Presbyterian Church four blocks away had dissolved, they too joined and were hardly ever absent from Sunday Services. These plain-spoken blue collar people’s generosity towards many needy children and any outreach project was the stuff of which saints are made. Hardly a month would go by and either the wife or husband, after Services, and in addition to their pledge, would press a wad of cash (always cash) into my hands so that I could “take care of that kid; he’s got a single mother, his jacket and pants are ragged and it’s cold outside. Take them to get him a coat and new pants and give the rest to the mother or take her to buy enough groceries.” Sometimes it would be $200 or $300. They wanted no recognition and forbid me to ever say where the gifts came from.   They did this not only at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter but throughout the year. I think they must have helped out no less than 75 or 80 single parents and their children, most of whom were at the poverty level,’ Steve recalled. “Somewhere in heaven, Beth and Hank are right there with Mother Teresa.”

The parish had a popular after-school care program provided by means of grants from the New Jersey Dept. of Youth and Family Services and from HUD in the form of a community block grant. Fr. Steve served as the program and grant administrator with the assistance of five “moms”who were the youth supervisors. The after school program cared for some 60 minority children between first to sixth grade keeping them off the streets for working parents between 3 and 6 PM during the school year.

The big draw at St. John’s was a full basketball court gymnasium on the top floor of the 3-story 1900 parish house. Kids as well as teams of cops and firefighters played basketball regularly in the gym through Fr. Steve’s invitation. “Here was this gym on parish property,” he said, “and it was hardly being used. No one in the neighborhood had any idea there was a gym on the premises.”

In 2002, Fr. Steve and his long-time partner, Jerry Bedard relocated to Indy as Steve had accepted the call to become rector of All Saints Church in Indianapolis. All Saints is located on 16th and Central Ave on the Old North Side.  All Saints is known for its “Anglo-catholic” liturgy and music and has engaged in various outreach projects throughout the City over the years. It has a substantial pipe organ and is the site of several concerts, choral and other performances of various kinds between October and May, “Arts at All Saints.” All Saints was built to be the original cathedral of the Diocese of Indianapolis; the cornerstone inscription is “All Saints Cathedral, 1911.”   The parish prepared for the centennial of the construction of the present church building in 2011.

Steve’s partner Jerry retired last December from his position as a financial aid specialist at IUPUI. Jerry grew up in Quebec and Niagara Falls, NY. They live in Indianapolis on the east side.