Applause erupted one Sunday morning in late February when parishioners at Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church heard the good news: After five years of holding Sunday Masses in a parish gymnasium, help was on the way.
The Diocese of Charlotte had agreed to pay $4 million to help Charlotte’s only Black parish renovate key buildings, including its shuttered church infested with mold.
For more than 70 years, the red-brick Catholic church on Statesville Avenue has been “an important spiritual and cultural home within the Black Catholic community in Charlotte,” said Rosheene Adams of the Diocese of Charlotte’s African American Affairs Ministry…