localized date
Current Time
After laying his support dog’s leash on the red-carpeted altar, 27-year-old Vincent Mroz started to preach in two languages at once: English and American Sign Language.
Mroz is vicar of Trinity Lutheran Church of the Deaf in Wilkinsburg. He is among the few faith leaders in the area — across several major religious traditions — who can communicate in ASL.
For people of faith, worship communities in their own language are important for both spiritual and material needs.
“My faith in God, it's very important, it fills me up,” said Patty Saraka, a deaf woman who is the secretary of Trinity’s leadership council. She helped build this church in the 1950s through bake sales and bazaars. She was part of the full Gospel choir that once existed here. Now that she’s 87 and widowed, the community is especially crucial.
“If I'm sick or having a problem, it's so important to be there,” Saraka said, “we help each other.”
Faith communities that offer ASL are few and far between in Allegheny County and even more sparse in less-densely populated counties. There are signs of hope for deaf worshippers, though, depending on the faith tradition. New ministries are emerging, technology allows greater outreach, and hearing people appear more interested in learning ASL to communicate with the deaf.
Trinity is the only church in the region created by and for Deaf worshippers who primarily use ASL. Here their native language is used exclusively in the preaching, in the leadership committee meetings, and on brightly colored felt banners featuring ASL expressions on the church walls. Trinity has declined in size from 200 people in its heyday. On a recent Sunday there were just seven worshippers, all of whom were seniors.
However, Mroz said, even though he’s much younger than those in the pews, “It feels like there’s a stronger relationship with the congregation as a whole versus some other (hearing) churches I've been to.”
“I feel like I'm finally home.”
Several years ago Mroz visited Trinity. He asked to lead the community after the departure of its longtime pastor, and will officially become pastor of Trinity when he is ordained later this month. Mroz is not deaf, unlike the previous pastor. He’s hard-of-hearing and grew up speaking oral English. He is still learning ASL.
It’s a transition for the community to not have a deaf leader. But, Saraka said of Mroz, “he’s trying very well.”
Many deaf consider themselves to have a separate culture, not a disability. However, they are like those with disabilities in being more vulnerable to abuse, having higher unemployment rates and fewer financial resources than their peers. Some 3.7% of Pennsylvanians identified themselves as having a hearing disability and/or deafness. That’s according to a 2023 analysis of the general population by the Northeast ADA Center.
Recognizing this need, the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh in Oakland maintains a web page with a list of disability support resources, though the community doesn’t provide ASL interpretation, said Imam Chris Caras who is a hearing person. If a deaf worshipper asked for accommodations or material support he said he’d have to use a translation app or type out notes to communicate as he does with the immigrants settling into the region.
Mroz has helped the Deaf community find resources like a therapist who uses ASL, food banks and clothing. And Trinity hosts potlucks that draw about 30 people.
But people of faith are often looking for more than social services from a church. A deacon from another community, Matt Chopek, notes that a person “cannot live on bread alone and needs God's word,” quoting a passage found in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Chopek, who’s 37, worships at Redemption Hill Church, which brands itself as serving “both Hearing and Deaf,” in Jefferson Hills. He is deaf and said that it’s difficult to receive God’s word when his native language isn’t used.
“If, for example, you're trying to learn the Gospel, but in a Spanish language, it's hard to figure out what each word means,” Chopek said. “The same with the deaf cultural language.”
Redemption Hill Associate Pastor Roddey Caughman came to the church specifically because he wanted to minister to the deaf. He is a hearing person who learned ASL at a young age to communicate with another child. When he was 17, Caughman felt God called him to serve the deaf, which he did in mission work around the world.
The Chopek family inspired the church’s ministry.
“They didn't want to be just content to be a couple that sits in church and watches an interpreter and just go to church,” Caughman said. “They wanted to bring the Gospel of Christ to the deaf community at large.”
So “the pastor and his wife, many of the congregants, started learning sign language,” said Caughman.
It meant everything to Chopek to feel included.
“It’s that same feeling that you want to feel when you go to heaven,” he said.
These days Redemption Hill has three deaf members, and up to five deaf visitors typically attend regularly.
A similar dynamic plays out in the Catholic parish of Mary Queen of Peace, comprised of two churches, one in Mount Washington and the other in the South Side. There’s a small deaf population but a larger worship community that’s interested in using sign language during Mass.
“It’s really exciting to see,” said Rich Patton, who as an interpreter on the altar, has a unique view – facing the congregation. “Twenty five to 50% of the church is signing the responses.”
One of the main responses that the congregation now knows is “Alleluia.” They clap and spiral their closed hands skyward like party streamers. In response to requests from hearing parishioners, Patton’s been teaching sign language classes.
Pittsburgh’s Catholic Diocese historically had a vibrant deaf community and ministry. The diocese staffed an Office for the Deaf with two full-time people. Now the deaf Catholic community has dwindled and leadership is left to a priest with other duties and a handful of volunteers at Mary Queen of Peace. There are also deaf Catholic communities and interpreters in suburbs including Plum and Cranberry.
One thing that can be particularly awkward about being deaf in the Catholic church is the important practice of confessing one’s sins to a priest, said Patton. There’s just one priest in the diocese who can hear confessions in ASL and he’s only at Mary Queen of Peace once a month. “People have to hold on to their sins until he comes,” Patton said. Alternatively they could invite an interpreter into the confession process or exchange notes with the clergyman.
Patton has been the treasurer of the local Catholic Deaf Council for as long as he can remember. He has a cochlear implant and can speak oral English as well as ASL. He identifies as “deafened.”
The council, Patton said, is trying to bring new life to the deaf community by creating social events like picnics and holiday parties specifically for them. In October, they’re planning their first deaf retreat in over 10 years. They’re inviting to Pittsburgh the first American deaf priest.
Some faith communities maintain outreach to the deaf even when they don’t necessarily have deaf congregants.
At Squirrel Hill’s Temple Sinai, Mara Kaplan, a hearing person, is chair of the temple’s disability inclusion committee. One person’s needs inspired the community to provide interpretation of some services.
“We had a woman in our congregation who had had traumatic brain injury, and she could no longer understand spoken words,” Kaplan said. “She used ASL.”
During the Jewish holy days and one Friday a month interpreters still sign prayers at Temple Sinai. An accommodation statement on the Temple’s website lets people know they can request an interpreter.
Having ASL is “a very public statement that Temple Sinai is inclusive for people with disabilities,” Kaplan said.
The woman who inspired the ministry at Temple Sinai has since died, Kaplan said, but "she really taught us that you don't know who needs it.”
Plus, you don’t know who’s watching online.
Both Redemption Hill and the Catholic community have worked to overcome the distance barrier by streaming their worship services.
Mt. Ararat Baptist Church and Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church, both in the eastern part of the city, have thousands of viewers on their separate YouTube and Facebook channels where they often broadcast interpreted services. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have about 10 deaf members who proselytize locally and they can point to extensive online literature in ASL on their worldwide website, including what they said is the first complete sign-language Bible.
Chopek said he couldn’t really see worshipping primarily via the internet. “There's no bonding, there's no relationship,” he said. “It’s really isolating.”
But Patton said that livestreams are an important outreach especially for those who live in rural communities where often there are no services at all.
Otherwise, he said sometimes if a deaf Catholic can’t get to Mary Queen of Peace, “they’ll go to another church that has an interpreter.”
Extended conversations with several people featured in this article, including an interpreter who signed for Mother Teresa, are at We Hopeful Pilgrims.
Jennifer Szweda Jordan writes about faith and can be reached at jennifer@wehopefulpigrims.com. Jennifer identifies as a hearing person and is a member of Mary Queen of Peace Parish in Pittsburgh, which was covered in this story. This story was published by PublicSource and was supported in part by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Pitch competition.
This story was fact-checked by Briana Bindus at PublicSource.
