The ex-parishioners formed a group and sued the diocese under canon law. The Congregation for Clergy operates the ordinary court for such cases.
By Feb. 10 both the appellants and the diocese had received the Vatican decision.
“Our position has always been that it’s always really, really regrettable and really, really painful for us as well as the parishes to have to come to the point of closing a church,” said diocese of Sault Ste. Marie chancellor Fr. Bob Bourgon.
“But the fact of the matter is that we know the world has changed.”
The small churches with minimal attendance no longer served the Church’s purposes, and the burden of keeping them open was hindering the diocese from pursuing its objectives, said Bourgon.
“The world has changed and we have to find new ways of making the Gospel known to the people and bringing it more effectively to the people,” he said.
Church closures were the final step in a seven-year review process that has tried to make the diocese more flexible and more responsive to changing demographics in Northern Ontario, said Bourgon.
“Unfortunately, in that reassessment, in that looking at things, some of our buildings and our parishes were no longer meeting our needs,” he said.
It’s too early to say whether the North Bay group will appeal the Congregation for the Clergy decision, said appeal organizer Phillip Penna. The group will make a decision only when everybody in the group has had a chance to look at the legal decision and pray about it, he said.
The final court of appeal in such cases is the Apostolic Signatura.
“We had to make some painful decisions. We did all the consultations we could and looked right across the board with everybody we could involve,” said Bourgon.
“The small group that is appealing — and they have that right — hopefully with this decision they will come to the conclusion that (we should) work together on healing... We’ve tried to be as compassionate as we could but at the same time we’ve tried to move ahead with a vision that would enable us to meet the new challenges of being a pastor today.”
North Bay parishioners’ appeal to Vatican over church closures fails
By Michael Swan, The Catholic RegisterThere was nothing wrong with the sale and closure of two North Bay, Ont., churches in the judgment of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy.
Former parishioners of St. Rita’s and Corpus Christi in North Bay had appealed to the Vatican to keep their churches open for some kind of religious purpose. While they acknowledged their bishop’s right to suppress the parishes, they disputed whether he was within his rights to sell the buildings and — in the language of canon law — reduce them to profane use.
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