Vatican court upholds the closing of Monongahela church
The Vatican’s highest court upheld the 2014 decision to close a Roman Catholic church in Monongahela because maintaining two buildings in the Mon Valley city was putting a “financial strain” on the parish, Bishop David A. Zubik announced Saturday.
The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura upheld Zubik’s decision to close St. Anthony Church, allowing the St. Damien of Molokai Parish to use its money for “mission rather than maintenance,” Zubik stated in a letter Friday to parish members.
“The future of Saint Anthony Church has been a source of conflict among some of you,” the leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh stated in the letter. “If you have had differences over church buildings, reach out to one another with open hearts full of love and reconciliation.”
Some members of St. Anthony held protests at the church and diocese headquarters, and they held a vigil refusing to leave the building at the final Mass April 27, 2014.
The group first went in May of that year to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, which later rejected the appeal to reopen the church at Chess Street and Park Avenue. The group next appealed to the Supreme Tribunal in December 2014, and the high court sided with the decision of the Congregation for the Clergy in Nov. 2015.
Laura Magone, spokeswoman for the St. Anthony group involved in the appeals, said the Nov. 2015 ruling was premature because the appeals process was not completed at that time.
“We’ve reached the end of the court system,” Magone said Saturday.
She said the group was not surprised by the decision and it received a letter from the Vatican written in Latin. The letter has yet to be fully translated into English.
The Monongahela parish, Magone said, likely lost hundreds of members because of the church closing. She also said she expects the diocese to close more churches in a practice that began in the 1980s.
The Vatican court ruling was issued June 22, and received by the diocese Wednesday, Zubik said.
The ruling confirmed Zubik “followed all proper procedures” in closing St. Anthony.
The parish has one remaining worship site, the former Transfiguration Church at 722 W. Main St.