Four churches in Holyoke are to merge into two churches.
Members of the Mater Dolorosa Church congregation met at Pilsudski Park to discuss the decision to merge with Holy Cross Parish. Here, Bonnie and Scott Antil of Holyoke listen during the meeting.
HOLYOKE – Members of Mater Dolorosa Church announced Thursday night they will appeal their parish’s closing and discussed possible tactics such as picketing and boycotting contributions to the weekly collection that supports the parish.
The Roman Catholic church is slated to merge with Holy Cross Church on July 1 and form a new parish, Our Lady of the Cross. They will move to the former Holy Cross building on Sycamore Street.
The Mater Dolorosa School for pre-school through grade eight will continue to operate and the Franciscan order which leads Mater Dolorosa has agreed to move to the new church with Father Alex B. Cymerman, the pastor of Mater Dolorosa.
But parish members said they are concerned about losing touch with their Polish heritage as well as their church. At the close of meeting the about 80 people who attended sang the Polish national anthem.
Victor Anop, of Holyoke, said his family has been coming to the church since the late 1800s.
“My family came in a wave of Polish immigration and they helped to build this church,” he said.
Mater Dolorosa Church
Holy Cross Church is expected to be come the new Our Lady of the Cross
Anop suggested a letter-writing campaign and pickets to show their dissatisfaction.
“We had a plan we were going to present to the bishop when he sprung this on us,” said Peter J. Stasz, of Holyoke, a lector and member of the church’s school committee.
Stasz said members of the four churches in Holyoke that were slated to merge or close – Mater Dolorosa, Holy Cross, Our Lady of Guadelupe and St. Jerome’s – met and agreed none wanted to close. They talked instead about closing rectories and working together to save money.
Members said they feel Springfield Diocese Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell misled them when he told them they could work out details on how the four would merge.
They also questioned engineering studies showing Mater Dolorosa has structural problems that must be repaired before becoming a safety issue.
Holyoke churches are among the last to deal with the issue of closings in Western Massachusetts. Since 2000, the diocese has closed or merged at least 69 churches across Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin and Berkshire counties.
One of the large-scale decisions was made in August 2009 when 19 churches were closed. At that time, the diocese said it planned to close churches in Holyoke in the future but needed more time, saying Holyoke had some unique situations.
Monsignor John J. Bonzagni, who is the head of the pastoral planning committee which oversees church closings for the diocese, said the committee has figured the number of Catholics in each community and decided how many churches can be supported by members.
“The question is can the number of Catholics in the city finance the number of churches, and in every case the answer was no,” he said.
For now the diocese plans to yoke St. Jerome’s and Our Lady of Guadelupe under one priest and will eventually close one of the two.
Bonzagni said not all the parish members of Mater Dolorosa are against the merger. While they are sad to lose their church, they are happy to be able to retain their pastor and the school, he said.