Aggrieved North Bay parishioners claim their attempt to overturn a decision to close and sell their churches was turned down “on procedural grounds.”

Former St. Rita’s and Corpus Christi parishioners are appealing a Congregation for the Clergy decision to the Vatican’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. The parishioners hope to get the Apostolic Signatura to rule “on the substantive merits of our two cases,” said former Corpus Christi parishioner Phillip Penna in an email to The Catholic Register.

Decrees issued by the Congregation for the Clergy Jan. 13 disallowed the former parishioner’s attempt to overturn Sault Ste. Marie Bishop Jean Plouffe’s decision to reduce the two churches “to profane but not unbecoming use” because their petition was launched too late under the Code of Canon Law.

Former parishioners of Corpus Christi and St. Rita's parishes in North Bay, Ont., are taking their case against closing their churches to the highest court in the Church.

The Corpus Christi-St. Rita's group will appeal to the Apostolic Signatura to have the diocese of Sault Ste. Marie maintain the two buildings for some form of sacred use. Last year the group asked the Congregation for the Clergy to rule that their churches had been improperly reduced to profane use to facilitate their sale. The Congregation for the Clergy ruled against the North Bay group in February.

There 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.