Nearly one-fifth of the parishes in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston will be closed, church officials said on Tuesday, a convulsive restructuring caused partly by declining church attendance and increased financial problems that were exacerbated by the clergy sex-abuse crisis.
In what may be the biggest loss of parishes by a US Catholic diocese at one time, 65 of the archdiocese's 357 parishes will close by the end of the year, compelling thousands of Catholics to find parishes in other neighborhoods and in some cases other towns.
"I wish there were some way that all of these wonderful houses of life and prayer could remain open and alive and full," Archbishop Sean O'Malley said. "But there is not."
In a grave tone, O'Malley said, "The alternative to this exercise would be that we would experience a continual decline in some areas of our archdiocese, closing parish after parish, school after school, out-reach program after out-reach program, all because the archdiocese would be unable to subsidize these entities. Furthermore, the archdiocese would be faced with the serious reality of not being able to meet its pension- and medical-fund obligations for its employees. This we cannot allow to happen."
Catholic parishes are being closed around the country, as dioceses struggle with a shortage of priests, changing demographics and deteriorating church buildings.
But in the Boston archdiocese, the number of closings is so high it will affect many of region's 2 million Catholics, with parishes being eliminated in nearly one-third of the 144 cities and towns that make up the eastern swath of Massachusetts.
"I don't know of an announcement in the past that has been as sweeping in terms of a percentage of parishes in any archdiocese that have been announced to be closing at one time," said R. Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame.
The pain of the parish closings is especially sharp here, coming on the heels of the long and painful sexual-abuse scandal, which forced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign in late 2002, and led to the removal of at least 25 priests amid hundreds of allegations of abuse. The crisis, which alienated some parishioners and donors from the church, only accentuated the need to close parishes.
"Certainly the scandal has put a drain on the financial resources of the archdiocese that would not allow it to keep parishes afloat that might otherwise have been sustained at least in the short term," Appleby said.
O'Malley was careful to say on Tuesday that money gained from closing the parishes would not go toward a US$85 million settlement reached with more than 500 victims of clergy abuse. The archdiocese recently sold the archbishop's mansion and some of the chancery grounds for that purpose.
But he said that "all that has happened has shaken the trust that many had in the archdiocese as an institution."
One particularly angry congregation was at St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, a suburb southwest of Boston, where the parishioners accused the archdiocese of picking parishes whose property sales would yield high prices, and of singling out outspoken priests.
St. Susanna's priest, the Reverend Stephen Josoma, and pastors of at least two other parishes slated to close, were among the 58 signers of a letter calling for the resignation of Cardinal Law in 2002.
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