Unanswered prayers
Benito Tauro believes in miracles and not just because he is a man of deep religious faith. He has, he believes, felt the hand of God on his shoulder.
Three years ago, as the East Boston man lay near death, his prayers and those of his family and friends at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish were answered when he received a life-saving heart transplant. He owes his life, he believes, to the skill of the doctors of Massachusetts General Hospital and the intercession of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Italy, a Capuchin priest who was elevated to sainthood in 2002.
In his prayers, Tauro had promised Padre Pio that, if he lived, he would commission a marble statute to be sculpted in Italy and erected at the East Boston church that first welcomed him 53 years ago when he was a penniless immigrant. True to his word, the 71-year-old Tauro and a committee of parishioners collected enough donations in money, labor, and materials to transform a blighted urban block into a small, spiritual oasis. More than 1,000 people came out in the rain to an open-air Mass a year ago to bless the site across the street from the church.
Where a broken sidewalk once stood there is now a lush green lawn, edged in granite, surrounded by evergreens, enclosed behind a wrought iron fence. The marble figure of Padre Pio anchors the space it shares with a small granite altar and statues of the Madonna and St. Francis of Assisi.
All that is missing are the benches Benito planned to install so that his neighbors could sit and pray or just enjoy the sun.
''I waited on the benches, and now I am glad," he said, cradling his head in his hands at the dining table where he and his wife, Debora, have served homemade pasta and meatballs to priests and bishops, even a cardinal, across decades of parish fund-raisers. Now, the prelates who broke their bread and cashed their checks do not return their telephone calls, do not answer their increasingly desperate letters. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is to be closed on Columbus Day weekend.
The Tauros know their neighborhood is changing, that Spanish-speaking immigrants are filling apartments once occupied by the Italian families that built Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1905. They know that attendance at Mass is down, that there are more elderly parishioners at the Italian Mass than there are children in the First Communion class. What they want is not an open-ended promise, just a chance to turn things around. The Rev. Robert M. Campagna, the minister provincial of the Franciscan Friars, has promised to provide a priest ''as long as Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish remains open and viable." The parish hand delivered his letter to the chancery. An archdiocesan spokesman says there is no record of its receipt.
In their many unanswered letters to Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, parishioners have appealed for a three-year trial period. They have offered to buy the abandoned convent, with an eye toward converting it into a small place of worship if the decision to close the church is irrevocable.
''The old people, they can't walk to another church," Benito said. ''They don't drive a car. They don't speak English. The bishops, they don't call me back."
Debora does not understand why the Catholic Church in Boston ''is turning its back on people of God. I came to this country, 15 years old, with the shirt on my back. Believe me, the last thing I want to do in my lifetime is say a word against the church, but these men are dictators. Why don't they talk to us? We stood by them during the sex abuse scandal, and now this is a new kind of abuse, spiritual abuse."
This weekend, Debora Tauro is busy recruiting volunteers for a sit-in to prevent the archdiocese from locking the doors of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Benito is busy praying. ''We need another miracle," he says.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
