Senior health class a soft-entry point for evangelization at St. Aloysius Parish

Downtown Detroit parish invites senior residents — Catholic or not — to discuss health and faith in a community setting

DETROIT — Senior citizens living in downtown Detroit face particular challenges, including rising rents and limited access to reliable transportation.

St. Aloysius Parish, “everybody’s parish in downtown Detroit,” is trying to help its neighbors meet those challenges.

Every Thursday, the parish hosts S.H.A.R.E. meetings (Seniors for Healthy Advocacy Resources and Education), where seniors can gather to discuss health issues and even meet with a nurse practitioner.

The parish recently received a grant from the Catholic Foundation of Michigan to launch “Healthy Topics,” which will help seniors learn about better eating and exercise habits and take steps to live healthier lives in the heart of an urban area.

“Healthy Topics” takes place on the last Thursday of the month from 1:30 to 3 p.m. and is free to parishioners and non-parishioners alike.

Michael Schultz, neighborhood services director at St. Aloysius, said S.H.A.R.E. has become a staple for residents around St. Aloysius to come together as a community and discuss health issues that personally affect them.

“On Washington Boulevard — where St. Aloysius is located — there are four low-income senior high rises, so a lot of the folks we serve live in these buildings and don’t have access to transportation or a community life, so this is an opportunity for people who live down here to come together in a church setting and talk about their bodies being the temples of the Holy Spirit,” Schultz told Detroit Catholic.

In addition to hosting Healthy Topics on the fourth Thursday of the month, the group meets on the other Thursdays for the senior Alpha program, where neighbors of the parish come together to discuss God and faith in their lives, regardless of background or denomination.

“We talk first about our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, which leads into prayerful conversations about asking God for healing and restoration,” Schultz said. “We have people from different faith backgrounds come in; most of them are not Catholic, but they are in our parish boundaries, and they live right down the street. During the last session, we had conversations about the gifts of the Holy Spirit because it was Pentecost.”

St. Aloysius has hosted a senior program get-together for the past 15 years, but the recent grant through the Catholic Foundation of Michigan has allowed the parish to expand upon the health meetings and incorporate more faith aspects to the program, where Schultz and his colleagues at St. Aloysius can share more on what it means to be Catholic.

“Sometimes in the Church there are barriers to entry for some people where they don’t understand the faith or maybe they don’t identify as being Christian,” Schultz said. “This is kind of that open doorway to get them in, to get their mind and heart open to what God is doing in their lives. And then the idea is that there is a bridge that Jesus can walk right across to their hearts.

“So yes, they’re having health conversations right now, it might not be 100% about God, but we’re establishing that relationship with the people who live down the street,” Schultz added.

The very location of St. Aloysius Parish, right in the heart of downtown Detroit, where there are no traditional neighborhoods from which to draw potential parishioners, means the parish has to get creative in evangelization efforts, from its sidewalk sandwich ministry and neighborhood services outreach, to hosting open houses and church tours before Detroit Tigers and Lions games.

“It’s about being the hands and feet of Jesus, serving the people that God places before you, being 'everybody’s church in downtown Detroit,' as is one of our taglines,” Schultz said. “We live out that mission when we work with the opportunity that God gives us, those moments of interaction with our neighborhood. I live in the neighborhood myself, and just walking down the street, greeting people by name goes a long way. And when we become the place where people feel comfortable to gather, when our church becomes everybody’s safe space, we can bring people closer together with one another and closer to God.”