Retiring archbishop leads final Ash Wednesday Mass as leader of the Church of Detroit at St. Aloysius in city's downtown
DETROIT — For the 17th and final time, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron led the Christian faithful of the Archdiocese of Detroit into the Lenten season, celebrating Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Aloysius Church downtown Detroit on Wednesday, March 5.
“I don’t expect that I'll be leading Ash Wednesday in 2026; that’s Archbishop-designate (Edward J.) Weisenburger’s job,” Archbishop Vigneron told media gathered after Mass. “I don’t know where I’ll be, but I'm grateful to have been the priest who celebrated the beginning of Lent for the people.”
The Ash Wednesday Mass was one of Archbishop Vigneron’s final Masses as chief shepherd of Detroit as the archdiocese prepares to welcome its sixth archbishop, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger, on March 18.
Archbishop Vigneron said he looks forward to the time he will gain from no longer having administrative duties and plans to use it to study and teach the faith from his new home at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.
“(For Lent) I’m giving up living in comfortable homes and living without my books, which are in boxes, and I'm trying to be at peace with being a man in transition,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “I am observing the penance God has given me rather than one I picked up.”
In his homily, Archbishop Vigneron emphasized the graces of the Lenten season during the Jubilee Year of Hope before distributing ashes to about 150 faithful who filled the pews in the lower level of the church along with his fellow priests and deacons.
“My message to everybody is that we need to be on this journey of hope together,” Archbishop Vigneron added. “It seems to me there's such a sense of hopelessness abroad. The pope has picked up on that, and he invites all of us to be apostles of hope and share that hope with our neighbors.”
Archbishop Vigneron explained that Lent is a journey, and although we might make personal Lenten sacrifices, we embark on the journey not alone, but with our companions in the faith.
Furthermore, the Lenten journey reminds us that this is not our true homeland, he added.
“We are strangers — we are not citizens of this world only, but our true homeland is heaven, and so we need to put aside those things that distract us,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “We need to get away from some things and put them aside. For us to journey together, we need to put aside any form of self-absorption, anything that leads us to put ourselves first rather than God and our neighbor. We need to reinforce the bonds of fellowship and communion that bind us together in the journey toward our homeland.”
Archbishop Vigneron advised the faithful to listen to what the Holy Spirit is inviting them to during Lent and to consider how they might perform works of mercy for their fellow man, particularly strangers, those on the peripheries and those closest to them.
“What can we do to perform works of mercy for those who, at least in our vision, are in the periphery, but also those who are close at hand?” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Don't we often overlook how we need to show love and mercy to those with whom we live? Husbands and wives with one another, parents and children, our neighbors, those who live next door?”
The Lenten journey must be a journey of hope, he added, and as we walk it together, we can sustain one another.
“We must journey with an ever deeper sense that Christ is the only sure guarantee of our happiness,” Archbishop Vigneron said.
