Parish praying to be spared

WALTHAM -- When 65-year-old Mary Mingace was a girl in the 1950s, she volunteered in the Sacred Heart rectory, cooking pasta and meatball dinners for the elderly Italian priests while they played boccie on warm evenings.

Today, Sacred Heart's young people build homes with Habitat for Humanity or deliver Easter baskets to the Franciscan Children's Hospital in Brighton.

Making manicotti or creating affordable housing, Mingace said, this parish has always stressed bringing out the best in its young people. That's why she is particularly alarmed by the threat that the Archdiocese of Boston could announce the closing of Sacred Heart on Tuesday, disbanding a 300-member youth program.

"For the church to carry on, it is all about the youth," she said. "They complain about the priest shortage, but they want to close our church?"

Mingace has a platoon of like-minded allies five decades her junior. There are 15-year-old Derek Mahoney and his friends, Francis Stanton, 16, and Justin Richardson, 18, all members of Sacred Heart's Life Teen program, Waltham's only youth ministry for teenagers. They, too, are on the intergenerational team fighting to save the parish.

"I was appalled when I heard that we were on the list," Richardson said. "We need to stand up and fight this."

The boys, and dozens of their friends, gathered in front of the church at dusk Sunday night with candles and guitars, and led hundreds of parishioners in a prayer vigil. Adult parishioners already were working behind the scenes, launching a telephone and e-mail campaign in defense of the 80-year-old parish. Last week, the Waltham City Council unanimously passed a resolution backing Sacred Heart.

More than 900 parishioners pass through the modernistic domed sanctuary on a weekly basis, and hundreds of young people attend religious education classes and programs. Collections are good, church leaders said, and the parish finances are sound. Last year, the Franciscan Friars that serve Sacred Heart baptized 35 babies and gave another 35 children their First Holy Communion.

Waltham's tightknit community of six Catholic churches already had recommended another local parish for closure. In response to a request from the Archdiocese of Boston in March, church leaders reluctantly determined that it should be St. Joseph's Parish on Main Street, which celebrated only 17 baptisms, eight First Communions, and one marriage last year.

But two weeks ago the archdiocese announced a list of an additional 37 churches that could face closure. Sacred Heart's name was on it.

The news rocked the church community, which ranges from the Italian-American septuagenarians whose ancestors founded this parish to a small, but growing, cluster of Indian-American families.

In a city that saw its 117-year-old community hospital close last July, the loss of one more lifeline is too much to bear, said longtime parishioner Joanne Ianetta of Watertown. Waltham cannot withstand the loss of two Catholic churches as well, she said.

The council of six local churches agrees. Last week, the city's Parish Reconfiguration Committee wrote to Archbishop Sean O'Malley, urging him to reconsider. "We exhort you not to accept any recommendation to close Sacred Heart Parish in Waltham," the letter stated.

Waltham City Councilor Sally Collura, who was baptized at Sacred Heart 56 years ago, wiped away tears of frustration at Sunday night's vigil. She and others have discussed worst-case scenarios: If the church is ordered to close, will the parishioners have the will to pull away from the archdiocese and operate independently?

"Every option is on the table," she said. "But we are trying to make enough of an impact out here so that the archdiocese will listen to their people. I know they have a tough decision to make, but you cannot sit on a chair in Brighton and not listen to your people."

Some fear archdiocesan decision-makers targeted their church with the misconception that Sacred Heart caters only to Italian immigrants and their aging descendants.

That simply isn't true anymore, said Raju Thekaekara, an Indian-American who joined the church in 1995. Five of his seven children, who range in age from 2 to 15, sing in the youth choir. He has hopes that two of his sons will enter the priesthood.

Thekaekara, who hails from the heavily-Christian southwestern Indian state of Kerala, said a decision to close Sacred Heart could prompt his family to move back to its native land to seek more fertile spiritual ground. "Maybe it is a sign from God," he said. "They are playing with the essence of our faith. Today they want to close this church. In 10 years which churches will it be?

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.