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  Parishes Ask Faithful for Help
Fund Campaign. Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal Hopes to Raise $2 Million

By Alan Hustak
Montreal Gazette
April 12, 2008

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=12570156-1277-419f-a371-32307e13f724

Cough up cash to keep Montreal's money-losing Catholic churches up and running - or they'll close.

That's the message behind this year's special fundraising campaign being launched by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal today, when a special collection will be taken in all parishes. The goal: to raise $2 million to keep Montreal's struggling religious communities alive.

In kicking off the 20th annual fundraising campaign, which runs until April 27, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte said he faces "new, previously unheard-of questions" about the future of a number of parishes.

"With the decline in church attendance, an aging clergy, and the high cost of maintaining church buildings, we have to look at creating a new style of parish," he said.

The diocese, faced with fewer clergy members and shrinking congregations, will have to spend resources on keeping unprofitable churches open or, as the cardinal put it, "adapt to new realities."

Those realities already have taken a toll on English-speaking parishes in particular. Since 1983, English-speaking Roman Catholics in Montreal have lost about 25 per cent of their parishes and one-third of their priests.

Twenty five years ago, there were 256 parishes in the archdiocese, 39 of them operating in English. Today, there are 235 parishes - 29 of them for English-speaking congregations.

Similarly, the number of priests in the diocese has dropped during the past 25 years from 667 to about 450 who are still active. In 1983, 75 priests ministered to English-speaking congregations; today, there are about 50. Significantly, the number of church deacons, men who perform some priestly duties, has increased from 18 in 1983 to 39 today.

As a result, many smaller parishes have merged and the diocese is trying to close or sell redundant church buildings.

Most, like St. Jean Baptiste and Notre Dame de la Dfense, are in the city's Plateau Mont Royal district - or, like French-speaking parishes in mainly English-speaking areas, they serve a small community.

The common denominator: They have huge maintenance bills and can no longer count on their congregations for support.

Often, it makes sense to merge parishes and consolidate congregations.

But it isn't as easy to shut down a parish church in Quebec as it is in other provinces.

In Quebec, under a law passed in 1824, church property belongs to a corporate entity called a fabrique - not to the diocese.

No bishop can force a church to close unless the fabrique's governing board of wardens agrees.

The acid test in determining the future of a parish is whether its fabrique can elect the required 12 members to its governing board from within its parish boundaries.

Four years ago, the wardens of five parishes in St. Henri and Little Burgundy dissolved their fabriques and merged into one pastoral unit, now called Bienheureuse Marie-Anne Blondin, with three churches instead of five kept open as places of worship.

But other parishes resist attempts to shut them down.

St. Dominic's is a case in point. Opened in the Plateau at the corner of de Lorimier Ave. and Gilford St. in 1912 for an English-speaking congregation, it remained located in the basement until the property was sold to the city in 1975. Parishioners then moved into a storefront building, on Mount Royal Ave., where they remained until 1990, when they began sharing premises with St. Casimir's Church on Parthenais St.

Even though it can no longer elect a board of wardens, St. Dominic's has an endowment and is struggling to survive.

"We're still a legal entity. We're not closed yet, and St. Dominic's shouldn't be allowed to just fizzle out," said Edna May MacKenzie, who was baptized and married in the parish.

"People remain with St. Dominic's even though they moved away. We still have our parish bowling league that we started in the 1940s, and we still have our golf tournaments.

"The parish still has money. We just want to be left alone. There are still a number of people who were born and raised in the parish and they would like to be buried from it."

St. Aloysius is another English-speaking parish that continues to resist attempts to shut it down. Founded in east-end Montreal in 1908, its church building at the corner of Adam and Nicolet Sts. closed in 1971.

But the parish continues to survive, in a small community centre and chapel on Marseille St.; it will celebrate its centennial May 18.

On Sundays, its congregation shares the French-speaking church of Ste. Louise de Marillac.

St. Raphael the Archangel Church, which opened on Lajoie Ave. in Outrement in 1930, has been without a priest since Jerry Sinel died in August. With its aging congregation now numbering fewer than 30, its governing board has accepted the writing on the wall. The church is to close June 15.

The diocese is counting on today's special collection to keep troubled parishes from suffering that fate.

"Money raised during the annual campaign goes to support activities in pastoral units that have financial difficulties," said permanent deacon Richard Saint-Louis, associate director for pastoral personnel in the diocese.

"The community has always been quite generous in its support. Since we began taking the special collection 20 years ago, the annual average is $1.5 million, and last year we raised more than $2-million."

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The only Anglican nuns working in Quebec are to vacate the branch house they have been renting in St. Lambert in June and move to their mother house in Toronto.

The four women are members of the Sisters of St. John the Divine. The Anglican bishop of Montreal, Barry Clarke, says the diocese can no longer afford to house the nuns in a "large but underused facility," which used to be a Franciscan monastery.

"Over the course of the years, the government of Quebec added school taxes, which had to be paid in addition to the lease, adding to the financial burden to the diocese of Montreal, which is already struggling to continue to minister faithfully to its people," Clarke said.

The local superior, Beryl Stone, says it makes sense for the sisters, faced with rising costs and dwindling congregations, to consolidate their operations.

"We no longer have the workforce we need to make the existing ministry here possible. Getting new recruits hasn't been easy, and that's part of the reason we're moving," she said.

The uniquely Canadian sisterhood was founded in Toronto in 1884 by a professional nurse, Hannah Grier Coome. It opened its first mission in what is now Moose Jaw, Sask., to minister to militia units sent west during the Riel Uprising.

The sisters began conducting their mission work in Montreal in 1929. They left in 1963, but came back to the South Shore 10 years ago at the invitation of the diocese.

 
 

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