Chicago group hopes landmark designation by city will save historic Catholic church

CHICAGO (OSV News) -- In Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, St. Adalbert Church, built by Polish immigrants in 1874, has deep significance for generations of parishioners. 

It was closed in 2019 by the Chicago Archdiocese as part of a consolidation of Catholic churches in the neighborhood, and in the intervening years, Julie Sawicki, president of the Society of St. Adalbert, has been fighting for the society to purchase the Chicago archdiocesan property. She told OSV News the church was a "Polish national church, which didn't require boundaries."

She is among parishioners around the country who have been working hard in recent years to try to save their churches -- many of them historic buildings -- as dioceses close and merge parishes amid changing demographics, dwindling Mass attendance, a clergy shortage and ongoing financial challenges, often brought about by abuse settlements.

Sawicki, 71, sat on the steps of St. Adalbert's boarded-up rectory next to the yellow-brick church whose twin bell towers are braced by scaffolding to keep their terracotta brick facades from crumbling off. 

When the archdiocese, which currently has more than a dozen churches listed for sale, moved to close the church in 2016, she said, the Society of St. Adalbert submitted several appeals to the Vatican.

"One of our appellants … was… baptized here and at 94 years of age, she was actually a parishioner. She was head of the women's club. She was a Eucharistic minister. All of her kids were involved in ministry here," Sawicki told OSV News. But she said the archdiocese did not accept the parishioner's appeal because she did not live in Pilsen.

The group lost all but one appeal, which it won on a technicality, this staving off immediate closure. 

The group has a plan to turn the convent on St. Adalbert's grounds -- valued at $3.9 million -- into a 40-room retreat house, which would pay for upkeep. The church would become a shrine to hold occasional Masses and host cultural events such as concerts. But Sawicki said that was rejected.

Now the group is hoping the city will deem St. Adalbert's worthy of being designated a historic landmark.

"(Chicago has) a historic preservation ordinance and there are a lot of churches in the city … that are already landmarked, not Catholic ones, but there are some beautiful churches on the South Side of Chicago," Sawicki explained. "And so we saw that as an opportunity here when we learned that, 'Oh my gosh these appeals are not going our way,'" she said.

In August 2023, the city's preservation commission gave preliminary approval to declare St. Adalbert a landmark. At a June 6 commission public meeting, the body finalized approval, but not without first hearing vocal protests from parishioners of nearby St. Paul Church, which is the main worship site that St. Adalbert was merged into as well as objections raised by the archdiocese. 

Some St. Paul parishioners have said that if St. Adalbert is landmarked their parish will have to shoulder its expenses. 

"It's a painful thing for a church to close. But if we didn't do it, there'd be no church at all. And in that sense, the ability and the right to express opinions is completely respected and understood," said James Geoly, the archdiocese's general counsel. "But the point I want to make as the representative of a church is that the church has the right to make this decision. And public entities and governments should not be used as tools to interfere with these core ecclesiastical decisions."

Landmarking for St. Adalbert needs two more votes, the first at the city's Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards. If it passes there, then the full 50-member City Council will make the final decision. 

Massachusetts-based attorney Brody Hale is helping the Society of St. Adalbert. His practice is representing nonprofits and startups, and he has been giving free advice on church preservation efforts for two decades. He told OSV News that landmarking will "make it hard for the church to be demolished." 

There have been some successes in efforts to keep churches from closing or to keep parish mergers at bay. In the St. Louis Archdiocese, several parishes won appeals submitted to the Vatican. 

In mid-May the archdiocese posted a statement that said the Dicastery for the Clergy ruled in favor of keeping three parishes separate and keeping another open. Under the ruling, St. Angela Merici, St. Norbert and Holy Name of Jesus, all north of St. Louis will remain apart but be led by one pastor, while St. Martin of Tours southwest of the city will remain open. The archdiocese said the dicastery "did not find just cause to combine" the three and "did not find just cause for "(St. Martin of Tours) to be subsumed by St. Mark parish." In February, the dicastery also reversed the archdiocese's attempt to close and merge St. Richard Parish northwest of St. Louis. The Vatican has upheld other archdiocesan decrees on parish mergers.
As of July 26, three parishes have outstanding appeals before the dicastery. In July 2023, the archdiocese announced that, while parishioners appealed mergers and closures to the Vatican, Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski had "suspended the effects" of the All Things New initiative, a pastoral planning process that would reduce the number of archdiocesan parishes from 178 to 134.

Declines in the number of priests, Mass attendees and revenues were all cited by the archdiocese as the key drivers of the effort.

Hale, 38, pointed to the Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which sold St. Joseph Church in Bethlehem, founded in 1914, to a private group that will keep the building as a worship site. In early March the Society of St. Joseph of Bethlehem announced it bought the church, now designated a chapel. 

Society President Paula Kydoniefs confirmed to OSV News that it paid $175,000 for the property. On its Facebook page, the society is raising money for maintenance and upkeep. 

In Newfoundland, St. John's, a private group bought the cathedral grounds of the Archdiocese of St. John's for $2.9 million (U.S.) through a bankruptcy order. The sale was finalized in early April and since then, the Basilica Heritage Foundation has been leasing the church building to the archdiocese. Foundation officials told OSV News the grounds will be used for cultural events and the basilica is being built up as a tourist destination.

In late May, the Buffalo Diocese in western New York, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, announced the planned merging of 34% of its 160 parishes.

The Buffalo Mass Mob is watching these developments. The group regularly gathers the faithful via social media to the industrial city's historic European-style Catholic churches where attendance has been steadily dwindling for decades. The visitors fill these pews, giving church coffers a boost and generating interest among some churchgoers to attend Mass there again.

Buffalo Mass Mob founder Christopher Byrd told OSV News, "The direction we're going with, is waiting to see once the diocese has a definitive list of the churches they are going to be closing, maybe we can hit some of these churches up before they're shuttered." 

Attorney Hale said determining why some efforts to save churches succeed and some fail "really depends on the bishop."

"I have found some very good plans rejected by some bishops that were absolutely carbon copies of plans accepted by others," he said.