Inducted in 2009
Humanitarian
Founder, SOME (So Others Might Eat), Washington, DC

Induction Video

Horace B. McKenna was born in New York City on January 2, 1899, one of 12 children. His father was Charles F. McKenna, a chemist and active member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. His mother was Laura O'Neill McKenna, a homemaker who would die shortly after his birth. According to family lore, the priest baptizing Horace objected to his given name, explaining to his father that there was no St. Horace. His father prevailed, replying that his son would be the first.

It was young Horace's father who gave him his first and most enduring lessons on being a "Man for Others" — and decades before the Jesuits had even distilled their notion of an engaged spirituality into the single phrase.  A reflection that appeared in the publication Ignatian Imprints quotes McKenna describing his father:

He was always involved in getting the wash lady’s son out of jail, or helping some Catholic institution that was afoul of the law and confused over some regulation. And his interests all seemed to be towards the poor. And I guess the instincts that I have for Saint Vincent de Paul work were inherited from him. I like to think so.

After graduating from the Prep in 1916, Horace entered the Society at St. Andrew-on-the-Hudson. McKenna’s initial assignment after his first vows was teaching at a school for affluent boys in the Philippines. There he watched an elderly Filipino Jesuit priest gather scraps left over from meals and bring the food over to the school wall to give to hungry local children. Returning to the United States to study theology at the Jesuit seminary in Woodstock, Maryland, McKenna taught Sunday school to African-American children who were shut out of the segregated parochial school.  As he would later recall, these two experiences focused the work that he would do after ordination.

Horace McKenna was ordained in 1929 and in 1931 was named pastor of St. Peter Claver Church in rural Ridge, Maryland, a predominately Black parish.  A biographer would list McKenna's accomplishments in Ridge as: "helping parishioners start four cooperatives and a credit union, re-opening the Cardinal Gibbons Institute, which was then the only African-American vocational high school in the country, arranging for the purchase of a new tractor to the great relief of plowmen who used only draft horses, teaching classes, helping to bring electricity to the area, rebuilding St. Peter Claver Church after it burned to the ground, inspiring the young, corresponding with Church officials asking for aid, and taking care of all the usual duties of a parish priest.” He was also a vigorous advocate for racial integration in churches and schools, and he paid for his convictions.  He was often threatened that he would hang for his views, and, in fact, one night, a car full of men shot up the rectory. McKenna and his fellow priests were only narrowly able to escape to the surrounding woods because a phone call had come just moments earlier warning them to get out.

In 1953, McKenna was transferred to St. Aloysius Church in Washington, DC, just blocks from the US Capitol. He would remain there until 1958 and then spend several years at the Church of the Gesu in Philadelphia, all the while ministering with uncompromising dedication to the Gospel.

In 1964, Horace returned to St. Aloysius, where he served for the rest of his days. Throughout these years, McKenna remained in touch with Alma Mater, stopping by Rose Hill whenever he found himself in the Bronx. A nephew, Charles Fargis, Class of 1967, son of McKenna's sister, Elizabeth, recalled how Uncle Horace once waited for him outside of Fr. Leonard's math class in Hughes Hall.

Back in Washington, as the economics of St. Al's Washington neighborhood started to change in the mid-1960s, there was a growing shortage of affordable housing for the urban poor. With help, Father established a new housing complex called Sursum Corda, a Latin expression meaning “lift up your hearts.”

In 1970, with the help of friends at Georgetown University as well as other religious leaders, McKenna founded SOME (So Others Might Eat), an organization that provided hot meals to the hungry. The impact of his ministry was an inspiration to many. In the years that followed, several direct service organizations would be formed in the area with SOME as their model. 

The food line also left a lasting impression on the students of nearby Gonzaga High School, many of whom came from Washington’s affluent suburbs and would walk by the line every day. One of those students, young Martin J. O’Malley, would later comment as governor of Maryland on how profoundly the line had a been reality check for many of them. For some, it was even more than just a reminder of how lucky they were — it was also a call to become involved and to serve.

McKenna was an avid fundraiser and a tireless spokesman for the plight of the poor. He received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, but remained faithful to his ministries and his duties as a parish priest, with daily mass and confessions as integral parts of his life. In 1977, Washingtonian Magazine named him their man of the year — just one of many honors Horace received in recognition of his service to the people of God. But perhaps the most apt of the titles bestowed on him was his nickname in both local and national circles, Apostle of the Poor.

In his later years, he began to lose his vision and needed help getting around. But advanced age and poor vision did not stop him from spending a night in a homeless shelter, in his own words, to see how his brothers in Christ were treated — an experience he wrote about for The Washington Post on October 28, 1978. Shortly afterwards, he celebrated his 50th anniversary of his ordination back at St. Peter Claver Church and was awarded yet another honorary degree, this time by Fordham University.

In May of 1982, Father suffered a fatal heart attack. The funeral at St. Aloysius Church was packed with people from all walks of life. He was laid to rest in the Jesuit cemetery on the Georgetown University campus, buried in a simple coffin: a symbol of his vow of poverty and his faithful witness to the plight of the poor.

On the first anniversary of his death, Archbishop James Hickey dedicated the newly renovated basement of St. Aloysius Church as the Father McKenna Center. Over the years, the Center would expand to include a small shelter for men, even as SOME and Sursum Corda would continue to carry out their missions — testaments to McKenna's legacy as an advocate for those in need. Horace: Priest of the Poor, a biography by John S. Monagany, was published by the Georgetown University Press in 1985.

More than a century later, the comments attributed to Horace’s father at his baptism seem prescient, especially in light of a quote attributed to one of McKenna's Jesuit superiors:

"He was a stubborn old goat, but if he wasn't a saint, I don’t know who was."