BALTIMORE (RNS) — Patrice Ellerbe, a 65-year-old parishioner at St. Veronica, had come to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on April 30 for a public forum on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s proposed plan for closing about two-thirds of parishes in the city. She knew the bad news already: Two weeks before, the archdiocese had announced that her 79-year-old Black Catholic parish was among those proposed to close.
“It felt like a punch in the stomach,” she said, a feeling the more than 1,000 Catholics gathered at the cathedral to give their feedback seemingly shared. As the plan was read out, the high arched ceilings of the nave began to echo with boos.
The closures, in the nation’s oldest Catholic diocese, are part of a nationwide trend of restructuring in response to falling Mass attendance and priest shortages. In explaining the need to close Baltimore parishes, the archdiocese has focused on the first reason, pointing to weekend Mass attendance that has fallen below 8,000 in a city that used to have 250,000 active Catholics. At most churches, officials say, funerals outnumber baptisms.
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The archdiocese has also emphasized that the city’s population has fallen by 38% since 1950 and have noted the high costs of maintaining church buildings.
“It’s getting harder to do more with less, many of the existing City parishes struggle to fulfill its Eucharistic vision due to the many challenges they face,” said Christian Kendzierski, executive director of communications for the archdiocese, in an email.
The Cathedral of Mary Our Queen hosted a public forum for ongoing conversations for the closure of about two-thirds of parishes across Baltimore. RNS photo by Aleja Hertzler-McCain
But for the remaining faithful, the habits of Catholic faith are deeply engrained. On Sundays, Ellerbe said, she makes the drive across the city to St. Veronica, in south Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood, where she was baptized. “It’s home for me,” she said.
In two previous draft proposals, St. Veronica had been selected as the host church for other parishes to merge into, Ellerbe said. If Archbishop William Lori approves the proposed plan, she will likely be attending at St. Rose of Lima, 2 miles away, or at a potential additional worship site in a nearby shopping center.
Black neighborhoods have disproportionately borne the brunt of parish closures in other dioceses across the country, but in Baltimore, six of the city’s 16 Black Catholic parishes are proposed to remain open, roughly in proportion to the citywide closure rate.
In the cathedral, Filipino Catholics led chants of “Save our shrine” and others waved the red-and-white Polish flag, each defending their parishes. Ellerbe doubted any would be mollified. “It’s so much data. It’s so organized,” she said of the plan.
Lori announced Seek the City to Come, billed as a process to “enable” the city of Baltimore to “become more fully alive and better serve the diverse needs of our faith community,” in September 2022, warning that closures were possible. The archdiocese has since conducted daylong visits to each parish, released a survey online and by phone and held regional and online listening sessions, as well as workshops for envisioning the future of the city’s ministries.
Debra Tagle was one of several members of the Filipino community who attended the forum with banners to advocate against the closure of additional facilities. RNS photo by Aleja Hertzler-McCain
Although some at the public comment forum admonished others for their behavior and reminded the crowd that there had been many previous opportunities to get involved in the process, the archdiocese still came under blistering criticism.
“This is a bad plan that will have long-lasting negative impact on these communities and will cause irreparable damage to an already badly tarnished reputation of the Catholic Church,” said Maria Nemcek, a parishioner at St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, predicting it would cause Catholics to leave the church. She accused the archdiocese of doing too little to attract new families to the faith.
