Julie Bubanovich worships in the same Roman Catholic church, St. Nicholas in Millvale, as her parents and her immigrant grandparents, and she’s taken a lead role in helping preserve its renowned murals.
Virginia Fisfis also worships where her grandparents once did, St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, whose brick facade and golden cupolas rise over an open area near the Strip District’s historic Produce Terminal.
Like many other Catholic parishioners, they are anxiously awaiting the results of a major downsizing planned by the Diocese of Pittsburgh in Allegheny and five neighboring counties in response to declines in worshipers, priests and funds.
But beyond their personal connections to their churches, they also see them as irreplaceable treasures for the Pittsburgh area as a whole.
“We are hopeful that we will remain open as a worship site,” Ms. Bubanovich said of St. Nicholas. In addition to being a viable parish and the diocese’s only ethnic Croatian congregation, it’s “definitely a go-to site in Pittsburgh” for its murals by early 20th century artist Maxo Vanka, she said.
The diocese has made clear that numerous worship sites will need to close, with final decisions scheduled for 2018.
Catholic officials have repeated a refrain this fall as they have overseen more than 300 meetings attended by more than 27,000 parishioners — that the “church” consists not of buildings but its people — its “living stones,” to use a biblical phrase.
Yet some sanctuaries, particularly in the older urban core of Allegheny County, hold significance not just for parishioners but for a wider population as cultural or architectural landmarks or as pilgrim destinations.
Among them:
• Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, its oxidized triple domes soaring above the modest homes of Polish Hill.
• St. Peter’s Church, an ornate Gothic sanctuary on the North Side that even had a 19th century brief run as a cathedral, which has recently undergone exterior renovations.
• St. Benedict the Moor Church, a landmark for the African-American Catholics in and around the Hill District, topped by a statue of its wide-armed patron saint.
• St. Patrick in the Strip District, part of a combined parish with St. Stanislaus, a small sanctuary drawing pilgrims to its “holy stairs,” which they ascend on their knees.
• St. Anthony’s Chapel on Troy Hill, a pilgrim destination with a renowned collection of thousands of saints’ relics.
As a chapel rather than an actual parish church, St. Anthony’s will definitely stay open, said Bob DeWitt, director of communications for the diocese’s On Mission for the Church Alive, the formal name of the restructuring program. But the future of the adjacent Most Holy Name Parish, which oversees the chapel, is under consideration.
The diocese is using 21 official criteria for deciding which churches to keep open, everything from building conditions to their proximity to the faithful to their parking and seating capacity.
Not on that list: a sanctuary’s cultural heritage.
“I am concerned that nowhere in the criteria” is the “historic significance of the building,” said Ms. Fisfis. She worries that the diocese might shutter some historic buildings because they are often costly to maintain.
Church officials still could consider a sanctuary’s cultural heritage, Mr. DeWitt said.
But, he said: “More often now we are working in service to the buildings, and the buildings need to serve us. ... We have to wisely manage our resources.”
When church officials said this at parish meetings this fall, “there were a lot of heads nodding,” he said. “These are the people who maintain these buildings.”
The diocese is hoping to create fewer, stronger parishes that can devote their resources to evangelization and improved worship. “If all we do is [restructuring], then we haven’t taken the necessary steps to become fully the church alive,” Mr. DeWitt said.
Been through this before
Sometimes spiritual and financial opportunities can seem to overlap.
For example, churches in the Strip District or the Golden Triangle sit on real estate that could fetch a good price. Yet those same churches, like St. Mary of Mercy in Downtown, open onto streets teeming with everyone from weekday workers to tourists to the homeless. St. Mary’s Red Door Program has fed the needy since the Depression.
The proposed models for parish restructuring will go through another year of consultations and fine-tuning before Bishop David Zubik makes final decisions in 2018.
But whatever the details, the big picture is that parishioners will see a widespread closing of church buildings and a consolidation of most of the remaining ones into multi-site parishes — that is, overseen by a single administration team while using more than one church building at different locations.
Parish deficits are rising, with Mass attendance and other sacramental participation down by 40 percent or more since 2000, according to the diocese. The already-thinning ranks of priests are projected to go down a half in the next decade.
“Overwhelmingly, people understand the need for change,” Mr. DeWitt said.
The diocese has been through this before. Through a wholesale downsizing in the early 1990s, and through individual church closings before and since, the diocese has shuttered scores of sanctuaries with long histories. Most sanctuaries have since been sold, many put to new uses as function halls or Protestant churches..
The Rev. Richard Zelik, pastor at St. Benedict the Moor, noted that this parish already has gone through mergers and is worshiping in what used to be Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the Lower Hill District.
“We adapted somebody else’s building and we adapted the space,” he said. He applauded Bishop Zubik for preparing for long-range trends. “Something needs to be done. You can’t keep putting fires out. It’s about the ministry.”
The diocese has a total of 188 parishes, some with more than one sanctuary. That factors in the merger of five Washington County parishes that takes effect in January and was in the works before On Mission.
Some of the proposed, still-tentative models give an idea of what might happen. Under one model, the already-combined St. Stanislaus Kostka-St. Patrick parish would merge with St. Benedict the Moor, St. Mary of Mercy, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Epiphany in Uptown and Our Lady of the Angels in Lawrenceville. Only three of the “campuses” or church locations would remain open.
In that same model, six parishes in and around the North Side would merge — Holy Wisdom, Most Holy Name, St. Peter, Incarnation, Risen Lord and St. Cyril — and keep three campuses open.
But there are other proposed configurations, such as merging as many as 12 older parishes into one, with five campuses. Several proposed models are being revised due to parishioner feedback, Mr. DeWitt said.
At Immaculate Heart of Mary, built by Polish immigrants, the small but dedicated flock hope it’s “still going to be part of some parish configuration, however that looks,” said its current administrator, the Rev. Mark Thomas.
“People travel from not only the neighborhood but from all over the place. They like to keep those traditions.”
St. Stanislaus Kostka, also founded as a Polish parish, is now mainly focused on attracting new residents and commuters to the gentrifying Strip District. Newcomers are lowering the average age, said the Rev. Harry Nichols, and he hopes the church remains open due to the “importance of the Strip District these days and the need for the witness of the church.”
The Very Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, a pastor at Holy Wisdom and the Latin-Mass St. John XXIII parishes, which share historic sanctuary space on the North Side, said members are hopeful that the upcoming mergers will result in larger, more vibrant congregations.
“Our people have been through reorganizations before,” said Father DiNardo. “They have a pretty good understanding of what the issues really are.”
Ms. Bubanovich, president of the Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka, which has been restoring the artwork in St. Nicholas, said she hopes the church remains a church but wants to prepare if the diocese has different ideas. “If something is going to happen, we’d like to be ready with plans.”
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: December 18, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
