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Center City is an interesting place to live and an even more interesting place for a church community. Of the six Center City Catholic churches (Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Augustine, Saint Joseph, Saint Mary, Saint Patrick and the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul), our neighborhood, Market East, is the poorest.

The Center City churches all have a significant weekday ministry in addition to the usual Sunday services. Daily Masses and confessions are reasonably well attended.

Center City is also a young adults neighborhood. There are plenty of senior citizens, but young adults also like living in our vibrant and interesting neighborhood. Despite so many young adults in the neighborhood and present at Mass, there are few young families with children. Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church, however, is packed with children. But the young adults from our Center City parishes often move away before having children or when the children are ready for school.

In the past, a significant weekday ministry was for shoppers who came to Center City to shop and who also came for prayer, confession or Mass while shopping. However, now retail Center City is failing. However, the Convention Center and other attractions have made Center City a tourist destination. Caring for visitors is an important part of Saint John's current mission. Of all the Center City Catholic churches, Saint John's has the most tourists and the fewest resident parishioners.

Center City workers are still a major part of our weekday ministry. Post Covid, there are not as many workers in Center City each day, but Ash Wednesday reminded me that many people still work in Center City. Center City workers lined up by the thousands to begin Lent at Saint John's, one of our proud traditions.

Archbishop Perez is proposing a program of renewal for the Archdiocese. His plan is to create 50 regional evangelical "hubs" throughout the Archdiocese. These hubs will receive resources, particularly evangelization workers, and the hope is that they can bring people back to church and invite those who have never been part of the church to think about joining. Hubs will typically be located in a parish, but are meant to serve a region where there are several parishes.

What about Center City? We are not typical parishes. Our parishioners valiantly and generously serve and support ministry to visitors, workers, young adults who are here for school or their first years of their career. Our few parishioners support a huge ministry to mostly non parishioners, including the patients at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. I love Saint John's and I love Center City. I think most of our parishioners also love our Center City home and ministry.

But what will a hub look like in Center City? We met a few times to talk about this, both at parish council meetings and in one session for anyone who was interested in attending. However, we haven't figured out yet what this hub renewal looks like in Center City.

I am planning to ask the other Center City pastors to meet so that we can talk about what a hub here might look like. What if we had resources that we did not have to fund to create a new and impactful evangelization ministry? This is exciting to me. I have some ideas, but they are not formulated enough to put on paper.