Located in the southwest corner of Chicago between 110th and 111th Streets, St. Christina’s was founded in 1926, right before its neighborhood of Mount Greenwood voted for annexation by Chicago. In a time when the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago is combining and closing shrinking schools and churches, St. Christina’s is growing, with about 2,400 families belonging to the parish and 480 children in the school, according to Father Brady. “We have a waitlist of about 30 children still in the lower grades of the school,” he says.
Thirty Years in, the Tradition of Friday Fish Fries Continues to Build Community at a South Side Catholic Church
Daniel Hautzinger
April 11, 2025
St. Christina's in Mount Greenwood has been hosting Friday fish fries for 30 years. Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for WTTW
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For some 22 years, Bob O’Malley has descended to the basement cafeteria below St. Christina’s Catholic School in Mount Greenwood to join fellow members of the community in enjoying fried fish on Friday evenings in the spring. For the last five years, since his wife died, he’s been serving up the fish himself. “Once they get you volunteering, you’re not leaving,” he jokes.
There’s an element of truth to that. As St. Christina’s carries on its 30th year of fish fries, there are still volunteers working it who helped out at the first one. “People come back year after year,” says Ed Hayes, who’s one of them. These days, he floats around: cooking the occasional grilled cheese, checking that other people have eaten, helping watch the popcorn machine. But his main role at this point is to visit and chat and greet people, contributing to the atmosphere of communal conviviality that is the hallmark of the fish fry.
“For anyone raised Catholic in the Midwest, Friday fish fries have long been a fixture of community life,” writes Paul Fehribach in his book Midwestern Food. The tradition comes from a Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays but gained its own independent popularity: even the Wisconsin-based fast food chain Culver’s celebrates fish on Fridays. As America has secularized, many Catholics have started observing meatless Fridays only during Lent, a period of 40 days leading up to Easter, the day when Catholics celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. As during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which occurs around the same time, charity is encouraged in addition to fasting.
“Anything worth celebrating is worth preparing for. And that’s why we have these 40 days,” says Father Ryan Brady, the pastor who leads St. Christina’s. The Bible relates that Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert, “so this is a way for us to walk hand-in-hand with Jesus and with each other, to try and grow in holiness,” explains Father Brady.
But he also sees the practice of meatless Fridays and resulting fish fries as an opportunity to expand community and bring people together, noting that eating fish on Fridays reminds him of abstaining from meat in dinners with his grandparents.
“As a Christian, we belong to a family – that’s what we believe. God is our Father, and we live together as brothers and sisters not just in the here and now, but throughout all time,” he says. A volunteer-run community fish fry like the one at St. Christina’s is “a wonderful opportunity for us to come together in a time of sacrifice and in a very deliberate time of charity, of almsgiving, of growing in love, and preparation.”
All photographs taken by Gonzalo Guzman for WTTW at St. Christina's on March 21.
The fish fry takes place in the basement-level cafeteria of the school every Friday during Lent. The Archdiocese’s leader, Cardinal Blase Cupich, inaugurated the season by visiting the first one this year.
But the fish fry is organized and run entirely by the St. Christina’s community. Volunteers set 50 numbered folding tables in the afternoon before the first guests arrive at 4:30, with meals served until 8:00.
Each table gets paper placemats; packets of ketchup, tartar sauce, and lemon juice; and a dish of popcorn. Cups of pudding and coleslaw go out with each order of fish, spaghetti, or grilled cheese.
“He’s never burned the popcorn,” Ed Hayes says of Tony Baran, who's manned the popcorn machine for years. Hayes has worked with the fish fry since its start 30 years ago, and recalls that one of the “founding fathers” wanted all the attendees to get free popcorn – so that they would drink more. Baran is accordingly heavy on the salt.
The fish fry raises money for the parish, so the more beer that’s sold, the more money raised. Since it’s entirely staffed by volunteers, prices can be low. The volunteers do get to enjoy a meal and some pitchers of beer on the house, particularly while working in the kitchen.
The beer-battered pollock spends seven minutes in the deep fryer – but “the timing gets a bit fuzzy after a few beers,” jokes Dan Conwell, who is in charge of frying the fish. (He sets an alarm for each fry on his watch.)
Dan’s wife, Katie Conwell, oversees the fish fries with two other women, although she’s quick to emphasize everyone’s contribution. “We just have so much help, it just works, it just flows organically,” she says. “I always thought there would be a bit of a struggle to get parishioners to help, but we don’t just have the school parents – community members reach out to me and say they can volunteer.”
Like Bob O’Malley, Richard started volunteering after his wife died a few years ago. He’s one of the servers who run food from the kitchen to tables, part of a well-organized workflow.
He’s joined by other servers like Linda, who has been volunteering since she joined the parish 25 years ago. After she’s done volunteering, she brings fish to the home of her 97-year-old mother, who grew up in the parish and still lives nearby.
St. Christina’s is a tight-knit, multigenerational place. “It’s like Mayberry: everyone knows everyone,” says Bob O’Malley. People are constantly going over to shake hands with someone or slap their back as they greet a familiar face. Volunteers wear name tags, which means they’re sometimes surprised to be greeted by name at church or around the school outside of the fish fry. “Neighbors aren’t strangers around here,” says Father Brady.
Parishioners aren’t strangers to him: he makes the rounds of the fish fry, asking schoolchildren about their siblings, parents about their families, grandparents about their grandchildren. He grew up in the neighborhood and attended St. Christina’s along with his parents and grandparents, and has been the pastor there for almost a year. His parents still come to church there every weekend. “In the past the parishes were more than just a place that you popped in and out of on Sunday,” he says. “The parishes were a place of socialization, a place of friendship, a place of support. And we’re doing that here.”
Volunteers emphasize the camaraderie, the satisfaction of seeing people returning week after week, and the delight of getting to enjoy each other’s company every Friday. One woman started volunteering to give back after the parish helped her family through difficult times; a group of several older couples who have been attending for years comes nearly every week and sits at table 1 to catch up with each other and reminisce.
People from outside the parish also come to the fish fry. Katie Conwell grew up in Mount Greenwood and didn’t attend St. Christina’s but did come to the fish fry. “It’s something I grew up on, something I want my kids to grow up on,” she says. Other nearby churches that host fish fries only hold them every other week during Lent. St. Christina’s parishioners, of course, argue that theirs is the best.
One Friday evening, Lydia Mahoney’s brother and his family were attending the St. Christina’s fish fry from a parish over (in this Catholic-heavy part of the city, people identify themselves by parish), while her cousins were coming down from Dunning to join. Multiple people that pass by her on their way into the fish fry greet her by name – including a 40ish woman who still calls her "Mrs. Mahoney." It’s her ophthalmologist, who is the third generation to run her family’s practice. Lydia started going there when it was run by the woman’s father.
As things tend to go in Mount Greenwood, Lydia and her husband John have been involved in St. Christina’s fish fry for a long time. While she now handles carryout orders, she has worked in the kitchen and as a server too. The Mahoneys helped organize the very first fish fry and have been volunteering for it ever since, even though their kids graduated from the school years ago.
Some of the founders were veterans who enjoyed fish fries at VFW halls, a common location for the tradition, and wanted to bring it to St. Christina’s. (St. Christina’s – and Mount Greenwood at large – is home to many veterans, as well as first responders.) They got kitchen equipment at a low cost from a hot dog joint that had gone into foreclosure.
They served over 1,200 portions that first fish fry, according to Lydia Mahoney. Since the pandemic, that number has shrunk, but a fish fry still typically sees around 500 to 750 plates served.
The volunteers used to arrive in the morning to bread the fish themselves before frying it fresh that evening, but fish has gotten too expensive to keep that up. Now it is bought pre-breaded.
It takes 35 to 40 volunteers to run a fish fry – and their positions are closely guarded. “Someone had to die for me to get this spot,” one volunteer has told Katie Conwell. Conwell herself started running the fish fry after the pandemic, and was brought in for an “audition” year to make sure she could handle it.
Kids help out alongside the adult volunteers, earning service hours that are required of them before they undergo confirmation in the church. They bus tables and collect trash, or roll a cart around offering coffee. “Oh my goodness, there’s kids everywhere at the fish fry, and it’s wonderful,” says Father Brady. High chairs are available for diners, and Father Brady says that the event offers an “informal setting for families to just be families.”
“It is an absolute community effort,” Father Brady says. “The children get to see the families sitting down for a meal. They get to see the parish alive outside of school hours. And they also get to see that service is more than just a few hours that you gotta do for confirmation. It’s something that we do as a Christian family always… And they see that none of these good things that they love and cherish would ever take place if there weren’t volunteers to do it.”
Even though Lent is a time of sacrifice, contemplation, and restraint, Father Brady still finds delight in it, thanks to the fish fry. “As Christians, we smile, we share joy – even when we’re in the desert,” he says. “It’s a wonderful thing to come together to share some laughs and stories and memories over the dinner table and have a taste of joy, even if we’re not having a taste of meat.”
