‘We have to be radically open’: Baltimore’s ambitious plan for its basilica and its neighborhood

This sounds like a sensational idea.

From The Catholic Review: 

Watching the heavy iron gates of the Baltimore Basilica swing shut at 4 p.m. every weekday makes Father James Boric profoundly uneasy.

“There are so many people who need God and want peace and don’t know where to get it,” said Father Boric, who became rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Feb. 20.

“We need to be a place people can come during the day and in the evening to pray and experience Christ’s peace,” Father Boric insisted. “We have to be radically open.”

In closing right before rush hour, the basilica misses the chance to invite the many people who work downtown to stop in for prayer on their way home, Father Boric said. There are also people in treatment at nearby hospitals looking for hope who might want a chance to pray in the nation’s first cathedral, he said.

Working with his pastoral council, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and others, Father Boric is enacting a plan that will dramatically increase the hours the basilica is open.

The effort simultaneously calls for commissioning “urban missionaries” whose ministry will focus on developing relationships with people on the city’s streets, letting them know of Christ’s love and connecting those in need with social services.

“The Source of All Hope Campaign,” launched July 10 by Father Boric on social media, aimed to raise $106,000 to pay for the security and maintenance costs of extending the basilica’s hours, as well as converting an unused on-campus, three-room convent into a center for Catholic urban missionaries.

As of July 30, the campaign exceeded its goal by more than $44,000 – allowing construction on the convent to begin. Father Boric hopes to start keeping the basilica open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, this fall.

“My dream is to be able to offer eucharistic adoration from 8 in the morning until 8 p.m. Monday through Friday,” he said, noting that the basilica currently offers eucharistic adoration every Tuesday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. “People could take five or 10 minutes or an hour and have that chance to pray.”

Read the rest.