Extinction. Tough word; the hammer of finality with no room for interpretation. See: Dodo, bird – 1662.
It is also the word the Catholic Church uses when a monastery, religious order or church is suppressed, removed or closed. It happened in 2011 to Pope Leo XIV’s childhood parish on the far south side of Chicago when he was a cardinal. Abandoned, pockmarked and filthy, St. Mary of the Assumption buckles below a cratered roof.
Ruination—what the faithful fear when Church officials cut their house of worship loose. The axe fell at 38 churches in and around Baltimore last May when the Archdiocese of Baltimore decreed that two-thirds of its metro properties would face closing.
Eight of those churches are now for sale, the properties advertised on the Archdiocese website. St. Rose of Lima in Brooklyn, profiled in Baltimore Fishbowl last September, is currently listed by Long & Foster for $1.39 million.
The congregation of St. Clare on Myrth Avenue in Essex is determined not to become one of them. Their fate rests on whether Archbishop William E. Lori had cause to close the parish and, in doing so, followed the strict laws of the Church.
St. Clare appealed to Rome for a revocation of his decree “to eliminate St. Clare parish” and, if not, allow “the parish to continue the important work it is performing in Essex and its surrounding area” while the case is being studied.
When the Archdiocese unveiled Seek the City to Come in 2022, an emphasis was put on evangelization – to the extent of door-to-door canvassing – to bring more people into a once thriving urban church whose numbers have greatly declined since the 1970s.
“Instead of talking about being Catholic we show what it’s like to be Catholic,” said Barbara N. Pivonski, 65, the Rocky Point-area parishioner leading the fight to overturn the closure. “Our food pantry fed 25 families every week. At Thanksgiving and Christmas we supported about 75 families with food and gifts. This Catholic outreach no longer exists in the 21221 zip code.”
While investigating whether the Lori’s closure decree met the demands of canon law, Vatican officials issued a suspension of the closure, thought to be the only one given to local parishes targeted for closing in 2024. St. Clare took hope in February when a letter arrived from Vatican Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik.
Speaking for the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, You Heung-sik wrote: “The requested suspension of the aforementioned act of extinctive merger [with Our Lady of Mount Carmel] is hereby granted, for the duration of the recourse.”
In not reopening St. Clare as a fully functioning church upon receipt of the letter, “The Archdiocese is in violation of a direct order from the Vatican,” said Pivonski.
Similar letters of suspension from Rome this year led to the reopening of 14 churches closed by the Archdiocese of Buffalo, which publicly said that the sales were necessary to settle lawsuits in that city’s clerical abuse scandal.
That has not been true for St. Clare. While the archdiocese asserts that no “steps have been taken to execute the extinctive merger” with Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the doors to St. Clare remain locked.
“Nobody’s allowed to go in,” said Pivonski.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore declared bankruptcy in September 2023 in the wake of lawsuits filed by some 700 abuse victims. It has said repeatedly that any money from the sale of the shuttered churches would not be used to settle those cases but forwarded to parishes merged with the closed ones.
Alfonse V. Corsi, an attorney who argues cases before the Roman Curia, was hired by parishioners of St. Clare for an initial fee of $2,650. In April, Corsi sent a letter to Lori and Archdiocese Chancellor Diane Barr, a doctor of canon law, contesting their actions. He noted that while the suspension letter forbade the sale of St. Clare, it also requires the church to remain open throughout the appeal process.
To which Barr responded in a three sentence note: “I can assure you that the Archdiocese of Baltimore has always been attentive to the requirements of canon law and the decisions of the Dicastery for Clergy.”
Multiple requests to interview Dr. Barr for the City to Come series have been ignored.
And there the case stands while St. Clare waits for a decision from the Dicastery on their appeal, which is expected though not guaranteed, before the end of the month. If they fail at the Dicastery, their last hope is the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court in the Vatican City State.
“We’ll pay [Corsi] again to take it to the next level,” said Pivonski.
One of the violations of the suspension order was the removal of “sacramentals” from St. Clare—the large crucifix that hung behind the altar, a statue of St. Clare and an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Along with the church piano, all were sent to Our Lady of Mount Carmel two miles away on Old Eastern Avenue.
“That hurt a lot,” said Pivonski. “If they took away the altar the church would look like a movie theater.”
The religious items have since been returned. A week ago, Lori’s spokesman Christian Kendzierski said the Archdiocese had “recently learned” that in accordance with canon law, it should “not have allowed the removal until the [appeal] process has concluded.”
Does their return to St. Clare bode well for the parish’s future? Can you say “your guess is as good as mine” in Latin? The decision was said to be forthcoming about three months after the receipt of Cardinal You Heung-sik’s letter. That would have been the final week of August.
“We’re just sitting and hoping,” Pivonski said. “I’m a wreck.”
“Someone in Rome must have gotten through to them and said these are things you can’t be doing,” said Massachusetts-based attorney Brody Hale, a consultant to parishes nationwide who have been threatened with closing.
A former altar boy, Hale’s pro-bono church work began when his family’s longtime parish—St. Francis of Assisi in the Berkshire County town of Lee, Massachusetts, now an art gallery—was shuttered in 2006.
Hale—together with Jason B. Bolte—founded “Save the Rome of the West” a non-profit based in Bolte’s hometown of Wentzville, Missouri, just outside St. Louis where more than 30 churches have been closed since 2023 in an archdiocesan program called “All Things New.” St. Louis is known as the Rome of the West.
The stated purpose of Hale and Bolte’s project is to “keep sacred space from being turned profane” at churches in the U.S. and other countries. They have been advising St. Clare since mid-summer and some of the parishioners have made donations to the non-profit.
Profane is the term the Church uses to ensure that its former sanctuaries do not become strip clubs, adult movie theaters, saloons or other houses of suspect corporeal pleasure. Even gas stations are prohibited.
Deeds to churches owned by the Archdiocese are not the same as those for buildings owned by religious orders, such as former Redemptorist parish St. Michael the Archangel at Wolfe and Lombard Streets in upper Fells Point. Despite cries of shame from old-timers who grew up attending school and Mass at the old German church, the Redemptorists sold the property for $1.3 million. In 2018 it became the Ministry of Brewing bar and microbrewery.
The only thing that Pivonski and her cadre want St. Clare to be is what the 10-acre campus has been since the cornerstone was laid in 1955: A place for Catholic worship and Sacraments offered to those who desire them.
While interviewing scores of Catholics who have found themselves without their beloved home church as the Seek the City to Come campaign grinds on, I ask a simple question: Why remain in an organization that treats many of its most loyal members so roughly?
Some have migrated to other parishes, rarely the one suggested by the Archdiocese in the mergers. Others have left the self-proclaimed One True Faith for Protestant denominations. And some, like the St. Clare congregants, have stayed to fight.
“It’s the faith I was baptized into,” said Pivonski. “It is the place where I can receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist.”
Rafael Alvarez is at work on a book about the Rosary. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com
