Clergy, employees ponder next steps
The news struck the Rev. Paul E. Kilroy like the lightning bolt that, at the very same time, had knocked out telephone service at archdiocesan headquarters: The parish he heads, St. Bernard in West Newton, will close this year.
But yesterday, as the shock of Tuesday's parish closing news began to wear off, Kilroy, like other church employees around the archdiocese, began turning his attention to what happens next. Should the parish appeal or accept the closing decision? And then, what is to become of parishioners and priests, of staff and of sacred objects?
Kilroy's church, whose parishioners did not expect it to close, has seven full-time employees who will lose their jobs, two priests who must be reassigned, eight buildings, several of which are leased to a school for learning-disabled children, and a variety of sacred objects that hold tremendous importance to numerous people.
"I'm just beginning to unravel this thing, because I didn't expect to be doing this, and I'm finding that it's multilayered," Kilroy said yesterday. "The first thing I have to deal with is: What does it mean to close a church? I have no clue."
Today, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley has summoned Kilroy and all other priests who work at the 60 parishes that will close and the 10 parishes that will merge into five to St. Julia Church in Weston. In a five-hour workshop at the church, the archdiocese will give priests "closing manuals" with instructions and advice on how to deal with the various elements of closing a parish, legally, ritually, and emotionally.
The archdiocese said yesterday that the parishes that are closing employ about 194 full-time lay people and about 75 priests. The parishes also have a great many buildings -- certainly in the hundreds -- and thousands of sacred objects, such as icons, altars, and chalices.
O'Malley's spokesman, the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, said the archdiocese hopes to come up with a list of closing dates for the parishes over the next two weeks and to draw new territorial lines reconfiguring the archdiocese from 357 to 292 parishes.
All but four of the targeted parishes are expected to close within six months, Coyne said, but the archdiocese has not yet decided how the closings will be spaced out over the six-month period.
He said archdiocesan officials will carve up its territory -- 2,465 square miles in 144 cities and towns -- into 292 parishes, but the archdiocese recognizes that many Catholics choose their places of worship for reasons other than geography.
"Every parish that is open is to make every effort to welcome anybody who is coming to their parish from a closed parish," Coyne said, "not just by making sure they have a seat in the church, but with a seat in the work, ministry, and direction of the parish."
The archdiocese will try to help find lay employees work in surviving parishes, but will also outline procedures for providing severance pay and medical and pension coverage for laid-off workers, Coyne said. The archdiocese is self-insured, he said, but has generally provided some unemployment benefits to laid-off workers.
He said priests at closing parishes will be reassigned either as pastors, parochial vicars, or chaplains. O'Malley recently invited priests to apply for posts as chaplains at hospitals, universities, or Catholic high schools, for example. The archdiocese is also anticipating a wave of priest retirements over the next five years -- 130 pastors are over age 70, O'Malley said Tuesday, and the average age of the 550 active priests is 60.
The Rev. Robert L. Connors, the archdiocesan secretary for ministerial personnel, estimated that 10 to 15 of the 75 priests working at closing parishes are already over 70 and may choose to retire rather than accept a new assignment. "However, the vast majority of them are not over 70, they're 55 to 70, so each priest we will meet with individually to talk to them about their future -- it's not a simple, pro forma bureaucratic thing," Connors said.
Many parishioners and former parishioners have begun to express an interest in acquiring sacred art or furnishings from churches that are closing. Coyne said the archdiocese's first priority will be to place those objects in surviving churches, or in non-Catholic Christian churches.
He said the archdiocese has also hired a security firm to maintain the properties of closed parishes until they can be sold or reused.
Christine McConville of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
