Catholic Diocese of Richmond
The Annual Spiritual Retreat took place the first weekend of November in 2018 at the Virginia Crossings Hotel and Conference Center in Richmond, Virginia. It was a great opportunity for the Black Catholic community from our diocese to come together and grow spiritually in the faith based on the theme “Be Merciful as your Father is Merciful”.
For this event, the Black and Indian grant successfully helped subsidize the cost for the participants including the hotel accommodation and the venue. The grant also helped contribute to the bridge building process between the communities of the African Diaspora. The speakers were an African nun from Kenya, an African-American lay minister from Washington, D.C. and an Afro-Latino lay minister from Puerto Rico who provided the scriptural importance of Divine Mercy, what Divine Mercy looks like in a tragic event in the life of the Black Catholic, and the importance of Black Theology in the lives of the Black Catholic Community respectively. As each speaker came and went, the Black Catholic community came together and discussed these different topics at various points during the retreat. As the weekend came to an end, the two Black Catholic deacons present closed the event with a closing prayer and send off, helping them take back to their communities this experience as part of their journey towards a more unified Black Catholic community.
