Cleveland Mass Mob XII — Immaculate Conception

Cleveland Mass Mob XII 

Immaculate Conception

10 a.m. Sunday 26 April 2015

4129 Superior Avenue

Come celebrate with the parish of Immaculate Conception for their 150th birthday. The parish is one of the oldest in the city. It began as a mission in the back of St. John's, the then very new cathedral. The chapel was moved whole east into an Irish neighborhood in 1856. Immediately after the War for the Preservation of the Union ended, the mission church became a parish (1 May 1865) with a French priest. The first bishop of Cleveland was a Frenchman, and to Cleveland came French sisters and priests to several churches. The neo-gothic church of to-day, had its cornerstone laid on the Feast of the Assumption 1873. Construction of the final stones waited for the new century.

Superior Avenue had several Catholic churches, as none were permitted in the nineteenth century on parallel Euclid Avenue. Since then: St. Columbkille is now in Parma. St. John the Evangelist had been enlarged and remodeled, more than once. St. Thomas Aquinas is gone, the school remains. St. Francis burned and the church moved to the school building and the parish has been just recently been eliminated, as has the nearby St. George whose property has been sold and is returning to nature. St. Andrew Svorad (the original home of the Benedictine Abbey and high school) has also been made to go extinct, and had been abruptly demolished with the bell still in the church, days before an announced list of parish closures. St. Peter, which was closed for a time, has been reopened by Rome.  St. Nicholas Byzantine continues on. Immaculate Conception (or the Mac) has retained its form and beauty. The stained glass, the stations, the organ are beautiful. The church is a sensual treat of sacred space.

Post World War II urban change, including highways, has reduced the population in the city and its neighborhoods. The urban Catholic villages are barely remnants. The church is not as filled as it has been, and most Masses are said in English; but Immaculate Conception was the first church in Cleveland to have the return of the Latin Mass in 1989.
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Mass Mob Principle:
A church is not common real estate. A church is sacred space, wherein the People of God gather to celebrate the Eucharist and other Sacraments as a community.

Mass Mob Foundational Statement:
We wish to attract people to come for a Mass, a celebration of Liturgy and Eucharist, in a parish community of an historical, and beautiful church.

The 'mob' is the People of God.

Keep massing and mob on!

Spring into the Mass Mob

Cleveland Mass Mob  XI
Saint Mary of the Assumption (Collinwood)
10 a.m. Sunday 22 March 2015
15519 Holmes


After a winter's hibernation the migratory parish of pilgrims is back. The first Cleveland Mass Mob of the new year will be south of Interstate 90 and the railroad tracks, in the northeastern part of Cleveland, Collinwood, which was annexed in 1910. The parish to be visited is Saint Mary (founded in 1905). It is one of two remaining Slovene nationality parishes in the larger metropolitan area. Cleveland is the chief locale of the Slovene diaspora. The 10 a.m. Mass on Sunday March 22nd will have elements of the old country's traditions in choir and costume.

This will be Cleveland Mass Mob XI. In this the second year of mobbing, the gatherings will center on the fourth weekend of the month. Some twenty cities have declared this type of ecclesial mobbing activity. The success and frequency has varied. This national phenomena began in Buffalo, and only Buffalo's mob is older. More recent mobs, and newspapers, have acknowledged Cleveland as a model. Cleveland has had the most mobbings, and its practice is to announce the next mobbing in the church of the present mobbing.

Mass Mob is a celebration of community, and sacred space, with the presence of Jesus. We wish to attract people to come for a Mass, a celebration of Liturgy and Eucharist, in a parish community of an historical, and beautiful church. Keep Massing and Mob On!