No one would expect that a 105-year-old lady from Madisonville, Louisiana and a 5th Century Irish saint would have much in common – except at St. Brigid Catholic Church on Western Avenue. Althea Vignaud, a parishioner there for 20 years, is known as “Puddin’” to her fellow congregants, who she calls by the same endearment.
“I don’t go to too many places, but everything that St. Brigid has, I’m involved in,” says Vignaud, an active member of the church chapter of the Ladies of Peter Claver. “[There is] a lot of love here. Everybody comes and gets a hug from me. This is how I was raised.”
Vignaud is a member of the Catholic African American community in Los Angeles, of which St. Brigid is a pioneering institution. In 1920, the church was established and celebrated its first Mass in a rented house on West 51st Street. Today, the campus, which was mostly built in the 1950s, is home to its congregation of Black and Latino families in the local neighborhood. The church is overseen by the Josephite missionary order, which was established in 1871 to meet the needs of newly freed people after the Civil War and whose foundation is to minister to African American communities.
Father Kenneth Keke, who serves as St. Brigid’s pastor, came to the parish in 2016, after serving as director of vocations for the Josephites in Washington D.C. He says that he was called to the priesthood unexpectedly, while preparing to become an engineer in his native Nigeria.
“I was born and bred a Catholic,” says Fr. Keke. “When I was about to graduate from engineering school, I didn’t find peace in anything. But when I would go to church to pray, I found peace. I traveled to my hometown from the campus, to find out what was going on with me,” he says. “In the process, something told me, ‘God is calling you to be a priest.’”
Fr. Keke’s education did not end with his years in seminary. Upon arriving at St. Brigid, he realized that he needed to be better prepared to serve his congregation’s needs and earned his MSW in 2018, through a remote program at Walden University.
“As a pastor, my primary role is to support my parishioners and the community,” he says. “I know that … immigration, jobs, finances – these issues tend to bring a lot of anxiety and sometimes can cause family problems. I support them … spiritually, with words of encouragement and [with] counseling and advice … while reaching out to the community and to institutions for resources.”
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Advocating for his parish with the L.A. Archdiocese and other Los Angeles agencies are a regular part of Fr. Keke’s ministry. He has established relationships between St. Brigid and the Los Angeles branch of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), and with ONE LA, a non-denominational agency that partners with churches and faith-based organizations. He has also been in meetings with Bishop Matthew Elshoff, to make him and the archdiocese aware of current challenges to the community, including human trafficking, the need to upgrade safety conditions near the church, such as adding a traffic light at the intersection of Western and 51st Street; and the immediate threat to families in the wake of President Trump’s policies on undocumented immigration.
“We have people who lost their jobs as a result of the wildfires,” Fr. Keke says. “Some of them are undocumented. They are scared, thinking they are going to be deported. They are afraid to even look for a job because who knows what can happen to them. They don’t have any money to take care of themselves and their families and they come to the church for help. I reached out to the archdiocese, asking how I can support them.”
Fr. Keke’s duties extend to the weekly task of nurturing his parishioners’ faith. He says that while in-person attendance has dwindled since the pandemic weaned worshippers to participate online, St. Brigid regularly provides opportunities for its members and guests of all ages to be present in person.
“One of [our] spiritual goals for the church is to have people come back,” Fr. Keke says, “… to see the difference between engaging with the community and doing this alone in the privacy of your home.”
For Claudia Williams, parish administrator and director of religious education, community is one of her anchors to St. Brigid. A native Angeleno with African American and Salvadoran parents, she jokes that her Spanish improved when the church’s former pastor, Fr. Thomas Frank, enlisted her help in translating his homilies from English. Initially invited several years ago by a neighbor to attend a Monday night prayer meeting, she eventually made her way to a Sunday Mass and appreciated its recognition of her African American heritage.
“When I showed up, I hear[d] the drums,” Williams says. “My heart started pounding. We had the libations, [honoring] our ancestors. Even though I didn’t grow up with that, I felt like I was home.”