CV NEWS FEED // Dozens of churches in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will celebrate their final Masses in the fall as the Archdiocese begins to close parishes as part of its reorganization plan.
CatholicVote previously reported that the Archdiocese has been in a multi-year restructuring plan called “Seek the City” in response to lower rates of Mass attendance, limited resources and priests, and the cost of maintaining a large number of churches.
Local news outlet WMAR reported that the Archdiocese is looking at closing 31 churches. Those churches will begin holding their final Masses in September and be officially closed by December.
CatholicVote reported in May that over the next year, the Archdiocese will merge 61 parishes into 30 worship communities in Baltimore City.
According to Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, the closures or mergers of a large number of churches are unrelated to the Archdiocese’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.
Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, vicar for Baltimore City and co-director of Seek the City, said that the final Masses are the hardest part of the restructuring process.
“[P]arishes are setting up the dates for their final masses—it’s hard to even say that,” he told WMAR. “Those masses that will be the goodbye and farewell masses for parishes … There are 31 parishes that will go through this pilgrimage of saying goodbye. Rites of farewell.”
According to WMAR, parishioners of closing or merging churches said that they feel “upset and disenfranchised” by the Seek the City plan. Bishop Lewandowski, however, told WMAR that the closures or mergers are an opportunity to look ahead to the future.
“Let’s embrace new life and look at the great opportunity we have before us to make history,” Bishop Lewandowski told WMAR in part, adding:
It really is that, and I want the history to not be that we closed churches; only that will be part of the history in the story that’s told. But I want the history to tell the story of the new and exciting initiatives that were made possible because we got out from underneath the maintenance and care, and management of buildings and property.
Bishop Lewandowski compared the parishes’ current unsustainable conditions to the beginning of the Church, “when the apostles started from nothing to spread the gospel,” WMAR reported, continuing:
He hopes the changes bring about a promising future, for a faith in a trying present.
