St. Louis, Mo., Aug 1, 2023 / 11:30 am
Amid a major restructuring plan in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — Missouri’s largest and oldest — seven parishes plan to send appeals to the Vatican, putting aspects of the mergers planned for the parishes on hold until the Dicastery for the Clergy issues a ruling, which could take several months.
“Out of respect for each parishioner’s right to this recourse and in keeping with Archbishop [Mitchell] Rozanski’s desire to maintain access to the sacraments, we will be suspending the effects of the following All Things New decrees until this process has been exhausted,” the archdiocese told CNA in a July 31 statement.
The parishes seeking recourse from the Vatican include St. Angela Merici (Florissant); St. Catherine of Alexandria (Coffman); St. Francis of Assisi (Luebbering); St. Martin of Tours (Lemay); St. Matthew the Apostle (St. Louis); St. Richard (Creve Coeur); and St. Roch (St. Louis).
Of those seven parishes, five of them were set to be subsumed into another parish and closed. St. Angela Merici and St. Matthew were set to be merged (not with each other) into new parish groupings.