CLERGY & STAFF

You may not have heard of it, but one of the oldest churches in Morningside Heights--Corpus Christi, between Broadway and Amsterdam on 121^st Street--has just celebrated its 99^th anniversary, and now begins a year of preparation for its centennial celebration next October.

In addition to completed repairs to the building's roof and sanctuary, church administrators will mark the occasion with a $300,000 capital campaign as well as a series of cultural events, organized in collaboration with neighborhood institutions, including the Manhattan School of Music and the Columbia libraries.

Reaching the centenary milestone is "an opportunity to honor your tradition, honor your past," said Rev. Raymond Rafferty, pastor of the church. "But," he said, "it also has to be a time that you make a commitment to your future and get more people involved." According to Rafferty, planning for the centenary began two years ago.

In the year leading up to the centennial, parishioners have been asked to commit to a spiritual exercise every Friday for the next 12 months, such as giving up meat or attending a weekday service. The exercises, Rafferty says," focus people on the upcoming anniversary and get their minds clearly on important spiritual factors." Rafferty said that he received over 50 such pledges from parishioners during the first week of the initiative.

Often overshadowed by the larger Riverside Church and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the red doors of Corpus Christi's quiet façade and adjoining school have welcomed such varying characters as comedian George Carlin, Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos, and Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and influential writer on spirituality and peace.

Corpus Christi is also the oldest of the three--Riverside and St. John held their first services in 1930 and 1941 respectively.

Centenary committee member Stephen

Sokol, sipa '01, emphasized the importance of the church to the surrounding community. He said that roughly 60 to 75 percent of parishioners are "hard-core" neighborhood residents, often Irish, Italian, and Hispanic families that have attended the church for generations.

One such churchgoer is Amy Perez, who grew up in the neighborhood and attended Corpus Christi as a child. "I like the quietness, the spirituality," she said. "It's a good feeling to know that you're going to a church that has so much history."

The history of Corpus Christi is tightly linked with that of Columbia. The University moved to its Morningside location in 1897, only nine years before the church's founding. Since then, much has changed, most noticeably the conversion of private housing into University-owned academic buildings and student apartments.

Rafferty explained that the replacement of families by transients has had negative effects on neighborhood unity as well as the size of his congregation. Although he doesn't see Corpus Christi as allied with the anti-expansionist groups currently organizing around Manhattanville, Rafferty does believe their voices should be heard.

The church also faces other concerns. According to Sokol, the effort to build up an endowment from the newly initiated capital campaign is important to raising the church's profile at a time when the Archdiocese is closing parishes around the state. "They choose one church, and say go to one a few blocks away. It just kills community," he explained.

But Rafferty said that being closed down is "not a concern" for Corpus Christi, though he agreed that the church must continue to assert its presence in the community. He emphasized the church's efforts to involve neighborhood institutions, including Columbia faculty and members of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who have preached at evening services.