Sacred Heart named first “Biodiversity Ark” in the US

Along the South wall of Lexington’s Sacred Heart Catholic parish, a little garden chock full of Black-eyed Susans, petunias and echinaceas grows. A vibrant aluminum sign that reads, “Pollinator Habitat, In Progress,” has been erected underneath an adolescent flowering tree, which peers over the top of the bright yellows and purples of the flora below. A window at ground level frames the plot, giving young parishioners enrolled in religious education a wonderful view of the bees and hummingbirds that flit about the plants during class.

Sacred Heart has become “America’s first biodiversity ark”—a title that reflects the parish’s deep commitment to restoring Lexington’s open land to its most natural state by eliminating invasive species, replacing them with their native counterparts and creating spaces for Lexingtonians of all religions to connect with and enjoy nature.

This title was awarded to Sacred Heart by the Saint Kateri Conservation Center, a program based at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university in Indiana. Their mission is to establish “mini arks”—areas dedicated to faith and biodiversity—in each Catholic parish in the U.S., by ensuring that each parish conserves a minimum of 30 percent of its open land for “the wellbeing of people, biodiversity and climate resilience through faith, rewilding, restoration and land conservation,” according to Saint Kateri’s website. 

For a parish to become an ark, it must complete an application that includes a report on its land’s relationship to Indigenous people and an assessment of the land available for conservation. Saint Kateri chose Sacred Heart as their first biodiversity ark because they had already met the 30 percent requirement and found Lexington to be a prime location for this sustainability initiative. In the words of Kathryn Rapperport, a leader on Sacred Heart’s gardening committee who has been working closely with the director of Saint Kateri, “People here [in Lexington] are really excited about the environment and about planting,” making the partnership a natural fit.

Rapperport notes that Saint Kateri looks for parishes with “a real commitment to the environment at a broader level. For us, they wanted to hear about the liturgical things that we do, the educational things that we do and the other service projects that we are involved in that support the environment.”

Sacred Heart planted the aforementioned pollinator garden this past spring and a meditation garden, and is currently working on clearing an access path that will connect its land to newly acquired conservation land near the Waldorf School, opening up new walking trails for the leisure of Lexingtonians. Most of their open land is forest, so most of Sacred Heart’s effort has been directed at replacing invasive plants—like Vinca—with native species, such as witch hazel and elms, and replacing overgrowth with clear paths. 

Sacred Heart invited its young churchgoers to plant flower bulbs early on this past spring, carefully timing the plantings so that the bulbs emerged by Easter Sunday. This is an example of the parish coordinating the flourishing of their new gardens with the liturgical calendar—one of the requirements to be an ark.

The other requirement—that the parish researches the Indigenous folk that once inhabited the land the church occupies—was born from Saint Kateri’s commitment to recognizing the ways that the land was cultivated by the parish’s predecessors. Saint Kateri, the first Native American saint, was born in 1656 and suffered from a difficult, turbulent childhood. She converted to Christianity, was canonized as a saint following her death and was chosen to be the namesake of the Saint Kateri Conservation Center due to her connection to the land. 

Rapperport says the Algonquin peoples once inhabited the area around 12,000 years ago, though not in a permanent settlement, as they lived more of a nomadic lifestyle. She postulates that what is now Sacred Heart’s property “was a place where people would pass through more,” as “Sacred Heart’s on a hill, [so it is not] good farming land.” Rapperport does not know what, if anything, the Algonquin people planted on Sacred Heart’s property, but knows that it was the general practice of the people to “use controlled burns to encourage native grasses, and [plant] maize, beans, squash, sun chokes and tobacco.” A female leader of the Pawtucket tribe deeded the land that became the Town of Lexington to the colonists in 1635. 

Sacred Heart sat unused for many years, beginning in 2004. Sacred Heart’s parishioners instead shared space with Saint Brigid, the only other Catholic parish in Lexington. Just a year and a half ago, the parish reopened with its own pastor and is now inviting parishioners to return. Debbie Cunha, a volunteer who leads the faith formation program at Sacred Heart, “doesn’t know” how easy it will be to get old parishioners back, as “many people in Lexington don’t even know we’re still open as a parish because it’s been 20 years since we were collaborating with another one.”

Cunha hopes that Sacred Heart’s recent efforts to combat climate change will attract parishioners, as she knows that many Lexington residents are avid environmentalists. She also foresees that the new spaces dedicated to promoting biodiversity will act as grounds for building community, which is important as “people are looking to reconnect [with people] again.” 

Sacred Heart’s latest transformation into an ark marks what will hopefully be a trend with Catholic parishes on a global scale. The Catholic church is one of the largest landowners in the world, so if the ark initiative “helps churches utilize their property in a more environmentally sensitive and sustainable way, it could have a big impact on climate change,” says Cunha.