Interparish Committee

DREAM SESSION 1 
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 - Welcome
optional dinner 5:30 pm 
session 6-8 pm
St. Leo’s Church Hall
227 S. Exeter Street

(3-hour free street parking in Little Italy or use any Little Italy garage.) 

RSVP for WELCOME using this link: 
evite.me/rqXVyGqyrq

The 5 sessions each will offer an  optional 5:30 pm dinner with       sessions beginning 6 pm.

DREAM SESSION 2
Monday, March 24 - Accompaniment
St. Vincent de Paul
120 N. Front Street, Baltimore
(Park in adjoining parish lot)

DREAM SESSION 3
Thursday, April 3 - Sending
St. Leo's

DREAM SESSION 4
Monday, April 7 - Stewardship
St. Vincent de Paul

DREAM SESSION 5
Thursday, April 24 - Liturgy
St. Leo's

How to prepare for these sessions?
The IPC will distribute information ahead of each session to help you prepare for the discussions. 

The parishes of St. Vincent De Paul and St. Leo the Great have been blessed with the opportunity to dream, design and become a unified parish serving this area of Baltimore City.

To design this new parish, our next step is to dream of the ideal parish that is grounded in the Archdiocese of Baltimore's (AOB) core mission priorities for a vibrant, responsive Catholic parish. The Interparish Committee (IPC) will conduct a series of five Dream Sessions based on the AOB priorities.

The first session (see left column) will focus on the priority of Welcome, described as: “To practice radical hospitality and welcoming as Jesus did, seeking out the disenfranchised and vulnerable and creating a sense of fellowship and belonging that is grounded in love for each other and humble gratitude to God.” At this session we will explore the following questions:

● What would being welcomed look and feel like for you in the new parish?
● What are three things we should do to encourage a culture of welcoming in the new parish?

To prepare for the discussion, we ask that you prayerfully consider and write responses to these questions. Your responses will be collected and used as our work proceeds. You may also want to reflect on when you have been the giver or
receiver in a joyous welcome experience and what made it joyful.

VIEW INFO IN LEFT COLUMN for details on the 5 DREAM SESSIONS. Parishioners from both parishes are encouraged to attend.

What is this new parish?
On February 22, 2025, Archbishop Lori decreed that “St. Vincent DePaul parish is to be merged into St. Leo the Great parish, Baltimore, effective July 1, 2025” and asked that “all of the faithful of the new parish work together to build a thriving, evangelizing community centered on the eucharist and reflective of their rich histories for the years to come”.

What is the Interparish Committee / IPC?
The Interparish Committee / IPC is composed of four lay members of each parish, both pastors of the two parishes, three members of the Archdiocese Seek the City team and Bishop Bruce Lewandowski. The IPC has been asked to recommend a design for the new parish. This recommendation is to be developed with the widest participation of both parishes. It is anticipated that the IPC will continue its work beyond July 1st when the new pastor is assigned.

How is the IPC engaging all parishioners to design the new parish?
The IPC is using a participatory approach called Appreciative Inquiry. Designed to invite all parishioners to engage in a multi-step process of bringing out the “best of each parish” – what parishioners value that they want to bring into the new parish. The IPC started the process with a Day of Discovery on January 26, 2025 when nearly 190 parishioners from both parishes celebrated Mass together and spent time in small groups getting to know each other and what each values about their parish. Wrapup report available here and Catholic Review story here.

How does this Dream session on Welcoming align with the “Day of Discovery”?
Appreciative Inquiry is used when a person or group recognizes that they need to take transformative actions to do their best and to grow. They don’t want to “fix a problem” but rather build upon their best values to create this new entity. Thus, the Day of Discovery was the first step in the process. We shared what we valued about our current parish. Building on that shared knowledge we can again gather to Dream of how the new parish will implement the core mission priorities: Welcome, Accompaniment, Sending, Stewardship, Liturgy. (Our five topics in the dream sessions.)

What are the AOB’s core mission priorities?
The Core Mission Priorities correspond to a path of discipleship that flows from and continually returns to the Eucharist as a means to grow ever closer to Christ. They also embody the hallmarks of an evangelizing, mission-focused parish.

● Welcome - to practice radical hospitality and welcome as Jesus did, seeking out the disenfranchised and vulnerable and creating a sense of fellowship and belonging that is grounded in love for each other and humble gratitude to God
● Encounter - to continually experience our own conversion and bring others to
experience the same through evangelization, revealing the truth of the Gospel and witnessing to others how we ourselves have encountered Christ
● Sending - to bring Christ to the world, practicing discipleship and encouraging each other through friendship and service as we support the work of the Church, provide for the material and pastoral care of the poor and suffering and advocate for the discernment of vocations in life
● Accompaniment - to grow as disciples of Christ and nurture growth in others as we study, share, and live out the teachings of Christ and his Church through education, faith formation, and discipleship endeavors
● Mission Support - to enact wise stewardship of the gifts God has granted us, the legacy entrusted to us by those who have preceded us in the faith, and the hope that lies in future generations of the faithful, so that our resources may be channeled to support the mission of disciple-making first and foremost
● Liturgy - to fully and intentionally engage in prayer, worship, and sacramental life that flow from baptism and reverential participation in the Eucharist.

In an Appreciative Inquiry exercise, after Discover & Dream, will come the work of Designing what the new parish will be. In our case, we will make this recommendation to the Archbishop for approval. Finally, we will arrive at a phase called Destiny – our new parish.

How can you participate?
The IPC welcomes all parishioners to participate and we are trying to find the best ways to gather as many as possible in the most comfortable of environments. In this period of Dreaming, we will host five evening sessions aligned with the AOB’s core mission priorities. St. Leo’s and St. Vincent’s will alternate hosting responsibilities and an optional dinner will be available prior
to the start of each session.