Worshipers fill St. Francis D’Assisi for its 125th anniversary mass. (Archdiocese of Detroit photo)

A video posted this week by the Archdiocese of Detroit shows the latest "Mass mob" at a historic Detroit church.

Last Sunday afternoon's gathering at 125-year-old St. Francis d'Assisi Church on Detroit's near west side drew 1,500 people (above) and was the seventh in a series of monthly pew-packing events designed to support "our city's struggling historic churches," by attracting suburban worshipers, a Detroit Mass Mob website explains. "This simple concept started in Buffalo, NY, a few years ago and has spread to many cities across the nation." 

"April was our first one and we've had one a month," local organizer Thom Mann says in the video below. "We've grown from 150 to 2,000."

Mann works with three others -- Annamarie Barnes, Anthony Battaglia and Jeff Stawasz. They met via social media: 

Archbishop Allen Vigneron also appears in the video, saying: "This is spontaneous. . . . So I'm trying to stay out of the way and do my best to encourage it."

Though the idea's spread to Detroit may have been spontaneous, the events don't occur by chance. As with promotional flash mobs, they're announced on social media. This event page is for the next one Nov. 16 at Our Lady Queen of Apostles in Hamtramck, to be followed by a Dec. 7 Mass mob at Nativity of our Lord on McClellan Avenue on Detroit's east side.

The group's Facebook page has more than 4,000 likes.

Its first five gatherings were in Detroit at St. Hyacinth, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Joseph, Sweetest Heart of Mary and St. Albertus, followed by a Sept. 28 service in Hamtramck (photo above).       

Detroit's participation in the phenomenon is part of a New York Times article last weekend about "the latest trend in Rust Belt Catholicism," which also mentions Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo. Michael Paulson writes:  

The movement is bringing thousands of suburban Catholics to visit the struggling, and in some cases closed, urban churches of their parents and grandparents. It is also attracting much-needed donations. . . .

An organizer of Detroit Mass Mob, Thom Mann, said participants had given nearly $100,000 to the six churches visited thus far.

Archbishop Vigneron tells The Times reporter: "“It doesn’t bother me that there might be some kind of touristic curiosity, because people through that are led to be in touch with God and with one another.”

-- Alan Stamm