Lowell prepares to close 7 churches

LOWELL --It was at 10:30 a.m. Mass two Sundays ago that the Rev. Patrick Hollywood addressed a harsh reality.

"Some parishes will close," he told the 105 people sitting before him in the cavernous Immaculate Conception Church in Lowell.

"But in the end," the 71-year-old priest promised his faithful, "we'll have a more vibrant church, a more dedicated church."

But getting there will be difficult, his parishioners said later. They are struggling through the final weeks of a year dedicated to deciding which seven of the city's 13 Catholic churches must close.

The Rev. Christopher Coyne, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, said the archdiocese wants just one Catholic church in each of the city's neighborhoods: Belvedere, The Highlands, Pawtucketville, South Lowell, Centralville, and downtown.

The archdiocese has given a similar mandate to Catholics in Lawrence, where -- as in Lowell -- the migration of Catholics from ethnic neighborhoods in the city to parishes in the suburbs has left churches with empty pews at Mass.

"There are just too many churches in Lowell and Lawrence and they are all in real financial trouble," Coyne said.

The closing of parishes in these mill cities have been on different schedules than other archdiocese parishes that are also bracing for closings. Bishop Richard Lennon began the process in both Lowell and Lawrence a year ago, Coyne said.

In February and March, Archbishop Sean O'Malley informed the 357 parishes outside Lowell and Lawrence that an undetermined number of churches will close due to poor attendance, costly upkeep, and a shortage of priests.

Coyne said churches in Lowell and Lawrence suffer the same problems, but "the circumstances are more dire."

It is an evolution that Herb McCarthy has witnessed firsthand.

The Lowell father of five has been collecting donations at Immaculate Conception every Sunday for the past 45 years. He can still remember a time decades ago when the pews that seat 1,300 people were filled.

"It's sad," he said, "Attendance is down. There are no young families coming anymore."

In the next few weeks, the parishes must submit a list of possible closings to the Lowell area vicar, the Rev. William Hanley. Hanley will review the list, make recommendations, and then forward it to Bishop Emilio S. Allue, the regional bishop, who also will look over the list and make comments. The entire package is due to an archdiocesan committee by June 1. Coyne said Lennon will meet with the committee to determine which churches should close.

As the city prepares for that news, historians say that to understand how Lowell -- a city of 106,000 people -- came to have 13 Catholic churches, one must understand its history.

Lowell, as we know it today, came into existence in the early 1800s, when members of Boston's wealthiest families began looking for new money-making ventures. Their once-lucrative export/import businesses had dried up, said Martha Mayo, director of the Center of Lowell History at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Investors decided to build textile mills at Pawtucket Falls, where the Merrimack River's hard-charging waters had an added fury. The mill owners devised an elaborate canal system to harness the water's power for energy and began buying land in what was then part of Chelmsford.

The investors needed people to build the mills and dig the canals. After depleting the local labor force, they turned to Irish laborers.

In 1826, Lowell was incorporated as a town. By 1836, it was the state's second city.

By then, about 20 percent of the city's workforce was Irish, Mayo said. To sustain the growing community, the investors gave an acre of land, close to the mills, to the Boston archdiocese. There, in the Acre, the city's first Catholic church, St. Patrick's, opened its doors in 1832.

Ten years later, St. Peter's, the second Catholic church, opened nearby.

By the 1850s, 13,000 people were working in Lowell's mills, but the demand for additional workers remained.

The investors started recruiting French Canadians. Waves of French-speaking Catholics arrived in the 1860s and 1870s, eager for steady jobs that did not require English skills.

The archdiocese did not provide French-speaking priests for the new arrivals, so in 1861, the French-speaking Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate came down from Canada to minister.

The order is dedicated to helping the poor and has a long history of following immigrant groups. It still plays a significant role in faith and social justice issues in the city.

The Oblates bought a Unitarian church in downtown Lowell for their Masses. They still run it as St. Joseph the Worker Shrine.

As the French-speaking Catholic population soared, the Oblates built the Immaculate Conception Church in 1871 and St. Jean Baptiste in 1891. Both churches are still run by the Oblates, but St. Jean Baptiste now serves the city's Spanish-speaking Catholics.

By the late 1800s, other Catholic immigrants -- Poles, Lithuanians, and Portuguese -- were arriving. They built their own parishes to maintain their Old World ways in their new neighborhoods.

By 1910, 75 percent of the city's 106,000 residents were either born in another country or had parents who were.

But in 1924, when mills in Lowell were employing about 23,000 workers, Congress adopted immigration policies that stopped new groups from arriving.

Soon, mill owners began moving their operations down South. By the 1950s, most of the mill work that attracted new arrivals to Lowell was gone.

In the 1960s, Congress revised its immigrant policy, and Lowell again became an immigrant destination.

But Cambodians, who make up an estimated 20 percent of the city's population, tend to be Buddhist.

The city has enjoyed a rebirth. There was a 1980s high-tech boom that created new jobs. Today, many of the downtown mills are being converted to artist studios and condominiums.

The Lowell National Park, with its well-restored mill buildings, draws thousands of tourists each year.

But the descendants of the city's early Catholics have moved to thriving parishes in Chelmsford, Westford, and Andover.

1996, many Lowell Catholics witnessed the controversial closing, and subsequent demolition, of St. Peter's Church on Gorham Street.

Last week, outside of Holy Trinity Church, Kathleen Roberte said that seeing an empty lot where her first church -- St. Peter's -- used to be was so upsetting, she avoided the street for years.

Now, she attends Mass mostly at Holy Trinity. Having lived through one closing, she is preparing for others by thinking that wherever she attends Mass a year from now, the pews will be filled.

With a nod toward the people leaving Holy Trinity Church, she said, Mass "isn't meant to be a solitary thing."

And Hollywood, the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, wants his parishioners to remember that.

"When this is all done, we'll have people with a universal view of the church, not one that is so parochial," he said in the rectory after Mass.

Christine McConville's e-mail is cmcconville@globe.com.