Dorchester church falls into financial peril
From its beginnings in 1872, St. Peter Parish has been a cornerstone of Dorchester, and so it is today -- a massive symbol of the Catholic Church's ministry to one of the poorest, most violence-stricken sections of Boston's largest neighborhood.
The parish compound, five massive buildings on Bowdoin Street near Meetinghouse Hill, stands amid three of what the Boston Police Department says are the city's most violent hot spots. In counterpoint to the resurgent gang culture on the surrounding streets, the parish sponsors an after-school program where tests scores have improved by 11 percent over the past year and a teen center where Catholic Charities professionals work to keep children out of trouble.
That good work comes as the Archdiocese of Boston has closed 62 parishes and sold more than $200 million in real estate over the past two years. The financial distress is still so acute that even a church like St. Peter's -- a historic landmark, an architectural treasure, and a rock of neighborhood stability -- is threatened.
Alarmed parishioners and conciliatory archdiocesan officials agreed at a meeting in the parish hall Tuesday night that major changes must be made in the size and organization of the parish. Once an eminent symbol of the power and piety of Irish-Catholic Boston, St. Peter's now has far more space and far less cash than it needs, they acknowledged. They agreed to form a task force to explore solutions.
The problems facing St. Peter's are formidable.
The soaring, artistically stunning sanctuary has multiple leaks in its slate roof. Rainwater is staining the walls, eroding the gilded Stations of the Cross, and damaging the magnificent stained-glass windows that ring the room. Sunday Mass attendance, around 20,000 in the church's heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, is well under 1,000. The convent is shuttered, the rectory almost empty.
There is widespread agreement that the convent and the rectory, which are next to the church, could be sold or redeveloped to improve the financial situation at St. Peter's without a negative impact on the community.
But the church building itself is a different matter. Parishioners fear that at the end of the consultative process on the parish's future, the building will be sold off. That would greatly increase the amount of land put up for sale and eliminate the single most expensive item among more than $6 million of critically needed repairs: the leaky church roof.
The financial situation for the parish is undeniably bleak.
The Boston School Department has notified St. Peter's that the Harbor School, which now rents space from the parish, will relocate to the Fields Corner section of Dorchester in September 2007, depriving St. Peter's of its major income source.
Meanwhile, operating subsidies from the archdiocese, about $150,000 last year, are down to $88,000 this year, and are expected to continue to fall. The question is how to find resources to continue and even strengthen the church's mission here, said the Rev. Daniel J. Finn , associate pastor of St. Peter's from 1980 to 1993. He has overseen the parish since the last full-time pastor retired five years ago. ``Violence has surged again among the youth in the neighborhood, and not to be able to continue our work here would be a great tragedy."
Bishop John P. Boles , who led the archdiocese's delegation to the community meeting, told about 200 supporters that the archdiocese has not decided to sell off the sanctuary building or any other structure, but that the archdiocese no longer has funds to subsidize the parish. ``The faith is going to continue in this place," Boles said. ``How it is going to express itself, I don't know."
The grand sanctuary, financed mostly by small contributions from Irish immigrants in the 1870s, is built of native Roxbury pudding stone -- the state stone. It has a lofty, open feeling because of a rare architectural form from the Middle Ages, known as hammer beam construction, that was used in the now- problematic roof.
Some parishioners feel that closing the sanctuary would rip out the heart of Dorchester's second-oldest parish, and are openly skeptical of Boles' s promise that no decisions have been made.
``This church has been a home to immigrants since its inception, and it still is," said Mary Boze , 64, whose family has been at St. Peter's since 1901. ``It is a beacon of hope in a neighborhood being torn apart by the gangs and the murders and the drugs.
``I have hope," Boze said, ``but my expectations are not positive. I expect they will tell us they want to sell off the church and move us to worship space in the decrepit building across the street that used to be a school."
Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com. 
