Canton Catholic parish announces planned closure of St. Gerard’s

Reverend Thomas Rafferty announced last weekend that St. John the Evangelist Church will become St. Oscar Romero Church, the only church in the newly renamed Canton parish, in the fall of this year.

Rafferty, the pastor of St. Oscar Romero, informed worshippers at Masses last weekend that the parish will continue to use the church building that is now known as St. John the Evangelist and that St. Gerard Majella Church will be closed and the property sold. Final Masses will be said at St. Gerard’s during the last weekend of September. All parish activities will shift to a single location on October 1.

St. John the Evangelist Church will become St. Oscar Romero, the only church in the newly renamed Canton parish, in the fall of this year.

“I wanted to let the people of each parish hear it from me,” Rafferty said. He also wanted to be present at the end of Masses to allow parishioners to speak with him. He posted the update on the parish website and sent emails to parishioners Monday morning.

In a statement to parishioners that discussed the process of deciding which church to close, Rafferty wrote in part, “During the past year I have been working with many talented people in a number of settings, including Parish Council, Finance Council and our Disciples in Mission Committee discerning a viable path forward for St. Oscar Romero Parish. Multiple cultural and demographic factors have resulted in dramatically reduced attendance and offertory revenue at each worship site. As previously announced, we concluded that we do not have the worshippers or the resources to maintain two Catholic churches.”

“We have undertaken an extensive and comprehensive process to achieve a decision,” he added. “We have held focus groups, virtual town hall meetings, and pasted question and answer formats on social media. We have released a series of e-newsletters to over 1,500 subscribers. Additionally, the above-mentioned committees, along with a series of task forces dealing with finance, construction, real estate and analytics, have met extensively through the winter, spring and present. We commissioned an architectural review to determine the structural integrity of both churches. All of these steps were taken to enable us to make a very difficult decision. We have concluded that the St. John facility is the better option for us to go forward as a single worship site.”

St John’s parish was started in the 1860s, with St. Gerard Majella opening at the start of the 1960s. “That was the height of the postwar baby boom,” Rafferty said. “You had bigger families.”

Both parishes thrived for many years, but over time, attendance at Masses dropped. “We just don’t see that level of engagement or participation,” he said.

In 2012, the Boston Archdiocese decided to create a parish collaborative that would share resources and to explore a merger of parishes if it was thought to be feasible. Three years ago, St. John’s and St. Gerard’s began their collaboration, working together on a pastoral plan. Twelve parishioners from each church community, including Parish Council, Finance Council and staff members, met to plan for the future. They examined the impact of low attendance and the decrease in the weekly offertory even before the pandemic closed church doors. “Had COVID never come, we might have naturally, eventually come to the conclusion that one worship site would suffice,” Rafferty said.

He explained that once the decision was reached last winter to close one of the churches, some 70 to 80 parishioners worked on committees that dealt with communications, construction, finance and development issues that needed to be explored. Each committee included parishioners with practical experience in those areas. The committees gathered information and shared it via the e-newsletter, the parish website, Facebook, letters and webinar.

Rafferty said that Kevin Provencher of the architectural firm Habeeb and Associates assessed both church buildings, finding that both were sound. St. John’s had some advantages in that the church was built in a more durable fashion than St. Gerard’s; it is situated on flat land, making it easier to expand the building; and there are four stairwells in the church that lead to the lower level, which will aid in the installation of an elevator. Another factor taken into consideration was the proximity to St. John’s School. “We are lucky to have a thriving Catholic school,” Rafferty said.

After months of discussion and consideration, the Parish Council, Finance Council, and Disciples in Mission voted on July 14 to use and update the St. John’s facility.

“I mourn it as a loss,” Rafferty said of the closing of St. Gerard’s. “When I was in the seminary and looking forward to being a priest, I looked forward to the sacramental aspects of priesthood. I looked forward to liturgies and Masses. I felt that the challenging parts of the job would be dealing with people who were suffering terrible grief. We were trained for that. People who had suffered devastation in a marriage or an economic loss, job loss, families who dealt with addiction. But I also knew there’d be weddings, there’d be baptisms, there’s be First Communions and there’d be the joyous aspects. I just never imagined that I’d ever have to deal with something this difficult and this challenging and I hate doing it.”

Updates to St. Oscar Romero Church include plans for an accessible restroom, the addition of an elevator, and the addition of meeting space for parish groups.

Rafferty did not give a sale date for St. Gerard’s. The Archdiocese has protocols in place for the sale of church property. Rafferty said that he hopes that an endowment will be established with some of the money from the sale so that St. Oscar Romero Parish can sustain itself during a possible future emergency situation such as COVID-19.

Rafferty has thought long and hard about the declining number of people who are active members of the parish and the need to strengthen the feeling of community among parishioners.

“As we vision a new parish, the Oscar Romero parish, knowing what our numbers are kind of going to be like, I think it’s an opportunity to totally re-examine our approach,” he said. “One of the great things about the new patron Saint Oscar Romero is we can re-envision ourselves as a parish committed to social justice. (Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence in his native El Salvador.) I think with his intercession and with his example we could envision and bring about a very new dynamic Catholic Christian community here in Canton. I feel we’ll move from grief to the emergence of a new, vibrant Catholic community committed to the social gospel.”

As part of the move to a single worship site in the fall, Rafferty will schedule an event to introduce people to the life of the late Oscar Romero.

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=75804

Posted by Mary Ann Price on Jul 23 2021. Filed under News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.