DETROIT (MO)
Detroit Free Press
St. Leo Catholic Church gets good news, other Catholics to learn their parish’s fate at weekend mass
By Patricia Montemurri, Elisha Anderson and Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writers
Parishioners at St. Leo Catholic Church – which is renowned for its outreach to the homeless, hungry and destitute – got good news Sunday.
The church, on Grand River near Warren on Detroit’s westside, will stay open, but as part of a merged parish with St. Cecelia, about two miles away on LIvernois near the Jeffries.
“Yes, we will be open. We’re not closing down. We’re changing, “the Rev. Theodore Parker, said to the applause of about 200 congregants at St. Leo’s noon mass.
In November, the Archdiocese of Detroit listed St. Leo’s, once the home parish of peace activist and retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, as one of the churches it planned to close in the coming years — in a proposed realignment of 270 parishes across the six-county archdiocese to deal with a severe priest shortage and financial shortfalls.
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