Before making the parish and priest changes, the archdiocese held some 350 listening sessions with parishioners, with at least one in each of the 178 former parishes. It also considered feedback from 70,000 Catholics in the archdiocese who participated in a survey as well as other feedback. The reasons given by the archdiocese for undertaking the process include unsustainable trends in clergy numbers as well as demographic changes in the archdiocese.
Some Catholics in the archdiocese were critical throughout the All Things New process because of the extent to which proposals would shake up parishes, both in terms of mergers and in the widespread reassignment of priests. More than 3,000 Catholics in the archdiocese signed a petition that asked the archbishop to halt the plan entirely.
That petition criticized the structure of the survey and claimed it only allowed the faithful to answer predetermined questions without being allowed to address specific situations in their own parish. It also claimed the process would cause mistrust in Church leadership, which could drive Catholics away.
Rozanski ultimately declined to revoke any of the 83 decrees he made regarding the final plans, leaving parishes with recourse only to the Vatican.
The St. Louis parishes’ appeals to the Vatican are not unprecedented in the United States. In dioceses such as Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, Boston, and Springfield, Massachusetts, parishioners have issued appeals to the Dicastery for the Clergy to save their parishes after their bishops ordered them closed.
In 2011, the Vatican upheld the then-Springfield bishop’s decision to dissolve three parishes but did not allow the closure or deconsecration of the buildings. The next year, following a ruling from the Vatican, then-Cleveland Bishop Richard G. Lennon announced he would reopen a dozen parishes closed in 2009 and 2010 as part of a comprehensive reconfiguration plan.
And in 2014, a decree from the Dicastery for the Clergy stated that St. Ann’s Church and Shrine in Buffalo could not be sold or repurposed for profane use. The Buffalo Diocese had closed the shrine and was seeking to sell the complex to a secular developer. The Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, in 2017 reversed the dicastery’s decree at the request of then-Bishop Richard Malone. As of early 2023, the former shrine is slated to become a mosque after being sold to a Muslim group.
Jonah McKeown is a staff writer and podcast producer for Catholic News Agency. He holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has worked as a writer, as a producer for public radio, and as a videographer. He is based in St. Louis.