Hartmayer Hands a 1954 Passionist Parish to a Boston Priest

Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer named Father Israel J. Rodriguez, a Boston priest, pastor of Atlanta’s St. Paul of the Cross Church effective July 1, 2026. The second-round slate, issued June 4 from Smyrna, also moved priests into a Vietnamese mission, a Haitian chaplaincy, an Emory rectory and a New Orleans seminary desk.

Hartmayer, a Conventual Franciscan, thanked the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ for founding the parish in 1954 and for “faithfully providing pastoral care for more than 70 years.” He named Father Patrick Daugherty, CP, and Father Luis Lopez Galarza, CP, for that work. The pastor’s chair, held by Passionists since the parish opened, passed to a diocesan priest from another see.

The June List Sent a Boston Priest to Harwell Road

The June 4 notice followed a first round of 2026 posts published May 15. Both rounds took effect the same day, July 1. Rodriguez arrived as an extern, released by the Archdiocese of Boston for service in Atlanta. He was ordained May 23, 2009, and works in English and Spanish.

THE JULY 1 POSTS

The table is a staffing map of a local church that still borrows men. A Boston pastor for a historic Black and Hispanic parish sits beside a Vietnamese administrator, a Haitian chaplain housed at Lourdes, and a former prosecutor sent to teach seminarians.

Passionists Built the Parish for Black Atlanta

Bishop Francis E. Hyland of Savannah-Atlanta asked the Passionists to founded the west Atlanta parish in 1954 for a growing African-American Catholic community. The first families came from Our Lady of Lourdes, then the only parish dedicated to that community. Father Emmanuel Trainor, CP, the first pastor, said the first Mass on January 20, 1955, in the Birch Room of McLendon Hospital.

The order built a school and convent before it finished a church. Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, Pennsylvania, staffed the classrooms. Graduates were among the first African-Americans in Atlanta’s Catholic high schools and at the University of Georgia. The church and an adjoining monastery went up on a 37-acre rise at 551 Harwell Road NW. Hyland dedicated the church on October 23, 1960.

HOW THE PASSIONISTS BUILT HARWELL ROAD

1. 1954: The parish is established at Hyland’s invitation to serve Black Catholics on the west side.
2. January 20, 1955: Trainor celebrates the first Mass at McLendon Hospital.
3. 1958: The school and convent are dedicated; the school later closes in June 1989.
4. October 23, 1960: Hyland dedicates the church and monastery.
5. 1961 to 1972: Passionists help open Drexel High School, a Newman Club at the Atlanta University Center, a clinic in Perry Homes and work at Freedom House in Mechanicsville.
6. 2004: The parish marks its golden jubilee as Hispanic families begin to join in larger numbers.

More than 30 Passionist priests and brothers served there, including Fathers Melvin Shorter and Michael Greene. Passionist records call St. Paul of the Cross the first Passionist parish with an African-American pastor and assistant. Seminarians trained in the summers. Volunteers ran camps. After the jubilee, Father Jed Sumampong, CP, welcomed Hispanic families into a parish that the order still described as bilingual. The parish history puts membership at nearly 500 families on that campus.

At the 2004 jubilee, Archbishop John F. Donoghue wrote, “Times change, and so do parishes.” He said he had “every confidence” St. Paul of the Cross would remain a vital part of the archdiocese. The line reads now like a forecast of a pastor who would not wear Passionist letters.

The Pastor Who Arrived in 2009 Died at 93

Father Jerome Francis McKenna, CP, of the St. Paul of the Cross Province, became pastor in 2009 and held the post until he died on April 7, 2024. He was 93, born April 13, 1930, in Pittsburgh, and ordained April 25, 1958. Before Atlanta he had been vicar general of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. The Holy See gave him the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice cross on December 15, 2006.

In an archdiocesan video the year before he died, he said he was born on a Palm Sunday. “My mother, instead of carrying palms, carried me into the world,” he said. He also said every job in his priesthood had prepared him for the next.

They had nothing. They had a host and wine in a medicine bottle and used a teacup and saucer for the chalice and communion plate. It was just the most wonderful and moving experience of my life, to have Mass with them.

Father Jerome McKenna, CP, on a 1997 Mass in Beijing with underground clergy of Yuanling

That teacup Mass was the charism the order carried to Collier Heights: preach the Passion, go where the church is thin, stay. Wake services were held at Harwell Road on April 10, 2024. A Mass of transferral followed, then burial at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Church in Pittsburgh. Daugherty and Lopez Galarza, already vicars, remained. Just over two years later, Hartmayer named a Boston priest as pastor.

Who Leads St. Paul of the Cross Now?

Rodriguez is the pastor. The archdiocese’s priest directory, last updated September 17, 2026, listed him as pastor in September, with English and Spanish as his languages. The same roster still named Father Patrick R. Daugherty, CP, ordained June 13, 2002, as a parochial vicar at St. Paul of the Cross. A June thank-you can sound like a farewell while a Passionist vicar remains on the published staff.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The pastorate: Rodriguez, a priest of Boston, became pastor on July 1, 2026.
• The thanks: Hartmayer credited the Passionists with the 1954 founding and more than 70 years of care, and named Daugherty and Lopez Galarza.
• The last long pastor: McKenna, a Passionist, led the parish from 2009 until April 7, 2024.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A full withdrawal: The September 17 list still recorded Daugherty as a vicar, so it is not established that every Passionist left the rectory.
• Lopez Galarza’s post: He was thanked in June; the public September extract does not settle his later assignment.

Personnel files lag, and orders sometimes leave a vicar after the pastorate passes. What did change is the title on the pastor’s line. For the first time since Trainor said Mass in a hospital room, that line belongs to a diocesan priest who did not take Passionist vows.

A Mission in Marietta and a Room at Lourdes

The rest of the June list is the same story told in other languages. Father Dominic Tran, ordained in 2009 and 54 when he spoke about the move, became administrator of Our Lady of La Vang Mission in Marietta. He said the work started from nothing. “We didn’t have anything yet. I put my trust in God,” he said, as the Vietnamese community used a vacant Cobb County school. He said religious education had grown from 20 students in 2024 to 100.

Father Cong Nguyen, ordained June 8, 2013, by then-Archbishop Wilton Gregory, moved from administrator to pastor at St. Francis of Assisi in Blairsville. Father Carl Jean, already chaplain to Haitian Catholics, took a room at Our Lady of Lourdes Rectory, the parish that had supplied St. Paul of the Cross with its first families in 1954.

THE OTHER JULY 1 MOVES

• Roswell: Father Abel Guerrero Orta becomes parochial vicar at St. Andrew.
• The basilica: Father José Enrique Quintero, already in residence, becomes parochial vicar at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
• New Orleans: Father Ben Thomsen, a former Georgia prosecutor ordained in 2022, joins the faculty at Notre Dame Seminary as coordinator of the propaedeutic stage.
• Emory: Father Bradley Starr becomes priest in residence at the Catholic campus ministry rectory.

Tran’s school, Jean’s Haitian flock and Rodriguez’s bilingual west-side parish are one labor market. Atlanta is pulling men from Boston, from its own Vietnamese clergy, and from a seminary faculty line to cover growth the old order houses can no longer staff alone.

Each Priest Served 3,854 Catholics by 2023

When the Passionists arrived, Catholic Atlanta was a small Southern mission. Annuario figures compiled by Catholic-Hierarchy show 24,414 Catholics in 1959, 109 priests and 26 parishes, or 223 Catholics per priest. By 2023 the same series recorded 1,195,000 Catholics in the 2023 count, 310 priests and 93 parishes, or 3,854 Catholics per priest.

ATLANTA PRIESTS AND PEOPLE

Catholics multiplied about 49 times. Priests rose from 109 to 310. The load on each priest rose about 17 times. Religious priests numbered 78 in 1959 and 144 in 2023, so orders did not vanish from north Georgia. This order did give up the pastorate it had held on Harwell Road.

Hartmayer put the community at 1.2 million when he spoke to more than 200 priests at a Lake Lanier convocation from September 14 to 17, 2026, and called the moment the “golden age of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.” He pointed to thousands received at Easter, $110 million in construction, and a jump in young men asking about priesthood. Father Rey Pineda, the vocations director, said 26 men applied to seminary this year and 20 were accepted, the largest incoming class on record, all but one raised in Atlanta. The pipeline is local. The pastor on Harwell Road is not.

Baltimore’s Passionists Left a Parish in 2014

Atlanta is late to a move the order has already made elsewhere. In 2014 the Passionists agreed to leave an Irvington parish after nearly 150 years, with the Archdiocese of Baltimore taking St. Joseph’s Passionist Monastery parish on July 1 of that year. Father Robert Joerger, then provincial, told parishioners the cause was an aging and declining number of priests. The parish kept its name. About 300 households remained. The monastery had already closed in 1989.

In a 2024 report to a general chapter, the superior general wrote that congregation numbers had fallen through the 11 years from 2012 to 2023, mainly in the northern hemisphere, and that houses would have to be weighed for closure. Two northern European provinces had already been suppressed. Atlanta’s handoff fits that arithmetic: a Southern parish planted when religious priests outnumbered diocesan men, returned when the local church had 3,854 Catholics for every priest.

On the September 17 roster, Rodriguez is pastor of St. Paul of the Cross. Daugherty, a Passionist, is still named as a vicar at the same church. The mission Hyland asked for in 1954 now answers to a Boston priest, on a 37-acre campus the order built and no longer leads.