Big parish, big heart
CHARLOTTE — More than 1,500 volunteers – including Bishop Michael Martin – put on hair nets and rolled up their sleeves to pack food for the 23rd annual Monsignor McSweeney World Hunger Drive at St. Matthew Saturday.
The atmosphere at one of nation’s largest Catholic parishes was jumping with a DJ cranking up “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and more favorites as people sang while packing meals that will feed people locally and around the world.
“It’s so moving to see families working together,” said parishioner Steve Favory. “Grandparents and children with so much energy and excitement, taking time out of their busy schedules to help feed the poorest of the poor.”
Throughout the day, the crowd felt like a small community, which was exactly what the drive’s founding pastor Monsignor John McSweeney, envisioned back in 2002. “St. Matthew is a big operation,” said parishioner Colleen Shevsky. “That was Monsignor McSweeney’s thing – he wanted this massive church to feel like a small chapel.”
Over the past month, the community came together to raise $400,000. Funds are used for food, education and sustainability projects in impoverished countries. Locally, the campaign is addressing increased food insecurity by supporting food banks and providing financial support to western North Carolina, as it continues to recover from Tropical Storm Helene.
The culminating event, Saturday’s meal packing event, is where food is assembled, boxed and trucked on 18-wheelers to a shipping container. The container will travel from Charlotte’s “country roads” to the dirt roads of India, Venezuela and Cuba to help feed those in need.
Parishioners were joined by community members, diocesan clergy and Brothers from Missionaries of the Poor monastery in Monroe, among others.
The work is split into four, two-hour shifts, each with 30 tables worked by 10 volunteers. Each person had a job, from scooping rice, dried vegetables and other ingredients into bags to weighing, sealing and packing them into cartons. Each table packed 12 boxes of 36 meal packs each, and every shift ended with a prayer and a cooked sample of what they had prepared.
Douby and Will became lifelong friends on Will’s mission trip to Haiti in 2020.It was a first-time experience for some volunteers, including Bishop Martin, who joked with children and danced to “Sweet Caroline” while he weighed bags of food. For others including Father Patrick Cahill, St. Matthew’s new pastor, it is something they grew up doing.
“I did this with my children when they were growing up, and now, we bring the grandchildren,” volunteer Mary Pat Nanney explained, gesturing toward Carson and Emery, 6 and 9. “It's just something fun and easy to do and a way to teach them to help others who are less fortunate.”
The day means even more to volunteer Will Kennedy, who has met the people the event will help during mission trips.
“Going to Haiti was a life-changer; malnourishment over there looks different,” Kennedy said. “This food and the money raised will help people like Douby,” a child he met a 2020 mission trip to Haiti.
Kennedy’s family sadly can no longer visit the child because Haiti has closed its ports due to turmoil in the country. He is one of hundreds of yearlong volunteers who work behind the scenes to help bring the drive to life.
The diocese sponsors mission trips to support Missionaries of the Poor ministries in Haiti and Jamaica. On one of those trips, Favory founded St. Marc Catholic School in Haiti and later started the non-profit Hands for Haiti.
St. Matthew’s previously sent its food containers to Haiti but shifted to Cuba this year due to the political climate. Funding, however, will be wired to the Missionaries of the Poor and St. Marc school in Haiti so they can purchase food locally.
“This drive builds a bridge of hope from our parish to the millions facing food insecurities globally,” Favory said, “with (some) money and food kept here to support our local brothers and sisters.”
— Lisa M. Geraci, photos by Troy C. Hull
