Why Charlotte’s historic Black Catholic church is getting a long-awaited makeover
An over 70-year-old historic Black Catholic Church in north Charlotte is set to receive a much-needed multimillion-dollar makeover.
The Catholic Diocese of Charlotte has agreed to pay at least $4 million to help Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church repair its deteriorating facilities.
And if Our Lady is able to raise $1.5 million toward the project, the diocese will give an additional $1.1 million.
“It’s pretty rare for the Diocese to put funds to any particular single parish,” said Emmett Sapp, the diocese’s director of construction and real estate. “With the magnitude of what needed to be done there, combined with the importance of the community and its location, we set out to find ways to creatively find funds.”
The magnitude of the repairs is great considering the project is estimated to cost over $6.7 million, Sapp said.
Our Lady’s was founded in 1955 and is Charlotte’s only Black Catholic parish. The campus at 1235 Badger Ct. includes the church, a cafeteria, an education building, the rectory and a community space called the Parish Life Center.
Over the last decade, the parish began to lose these buildings to age, mold and deterioration.
In 2020, the parish vacated the church building and since then, Mass and all other services have taken place in the Life Center.
And while the parish is growing, it couldn’t keep up financially with the repairs.
Until now.
What’s next for Charlotte’s only Black Catholic parish?
With a majority of Our Lady’s buildings unusable, the parish has many plans for redevelopment.
Some preliminary plans include abatement of asbestos and remediation of mold throughout the buildings. The parish wants to expand the church to create a new vestibule and add restrooms. And with the expansion, Our Lady wants to increase capacity from 262 people to 450, according to the church’s town hall documents from February.
As for funding, the diocese will grant Our Lady the $4 million over a six-year period, starting next year. Next spring, the parish will start its fundraising campaign. Construction should begin in 2028.
Charlotte’s growing Catholic presence
Nationally, religious service attendance is down. About 30% of Americans say they attend a service either every week or almost every week, a 2024 report from Gallup showed. That’s down from 42% almost two decades ago.
About 56% of Americans in 2024 said they either seldomly or never go to a service, according to Gallup.
That decline has also occurred in Charlotte. And with the city’s development growth, it has led houses of worship to consider consolidating congregations or to utilize its land for affordable housing.
But that isn’t the case for Catholic churches in Charlotte, according to Sapp.
Membership is growing to the point where the facilities need to grow, according to Sapp. Since 2023, Sapp said, there’s been about $250 million in capital projects expanding churches that have either started or been completed.
Population growth is fueling the need for expansions, Sapp said, as Catholics are among the many people relocating to Charlotte from the Midwest and Northeast.
That’s especially seen in the Hispanic population.
As such, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the largest predominantly Hispanic parish in the diocese, has to build a new church for its members. Over 10,000 people attend Easter service at Our Lady of Guadalupe this year, according to the Catholic News Herald.
The church is about 14,000 square feet. Parish leaders are looking to expand that to have a seating capacity of 1,500 people which may cost over $10 million, the News Herald reported.
“Here in Charlotte, we do not have declining membership,” Sapp said. “It’s growing at a pace that we can’t keep up with.”
