One parish in Connecticut comprising 8 Catholic Churches to be named for the founder of the Knights of Columbus

 

8 New Haven Catholic churches to merge into Blessed Michael McGivney Parish next month

Meghan Friedmann
Staff writer

NEW HAVEN — While the city’s eight Roman Catholic churches will remain open for the foreseeable future, they will officially merge into one parish next month under a plan that the Archdiocese of Hartford set in motion in 2021.

Ultimately, leaders hope the change will create one united Catholic community in New Haven and help more successfully spread the Catholic faith, said the Rev. Ryan Lerner, who was named moderator of the citywide parish in December 2021.

On June 7, Archbishop Leonard Blair issued a decree formalizing the merger: as of July 1, the churches of Saint Michael, Saint Anthony, Saint Martin de Porres, Saint Stanislaus, Saints Aiden and Brendan, Saint Francis, Saint Mary and Saint Joseph will become part of the Blessed Michael McGivney Parish.

In the short term, churchgoers are unlikely to see major changes in their religious life, Lerner said. None of the churches is closing, he said, and there will not immediately be any major personnel changes.

Officials hope “to keep (the churches) open for as long as we can, but all of that always depends on the resources, and obviously that’s financial, property and facilities,” Lerner said.

Though July 1 marks the official date of the merger, Lerner said the transition will take longer. Once it is complete, the eight churches will share finances and operate under a single administration based at St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue, according to Lerner.

Sacramental registers, records and historic documents also will be housed there, per Blair’s decree.

“It’s quite a process to bring everything together,” said Lerner. “That’s going to take time, you know, to sort out the civil aspects.”

The Church’s broader goal is to unite the faithful in New Haven.

“The biggest thing, the most important thing, the most challenging thing is to create a culture of unity,” Lerner said.

Catholicism is practiced in many different ways, he noted, and the communities within the city’s Roman Catholic Church are diverse.

New Haven, for example, is home to the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, one of the few historically Black Catholic churches in the region. Meanwhile, the fastest-growing group of worshippers in city churches is Latino, according to Lerner.

Next to Spanish and English, Polish is the most spoken language in New Haven’s Catholic community, he said.

With those factors in mind, three pastors are overseeing the merger, with Lerner guiding the conversation as moderator.

The other pastors are the Revs. Hector Rangel of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish and Sebastian Kos of St. Stanislaus Parish, according to Lerner, who said Rangel speaks Spanish while Kos speaks Polish.

A decrease in Mass attendance, insufficient priestly personnel and the proximity of New Haven’s churches to one another were a few of the factors behind Blair’s decision to create a citywide parish, his decree says.

By pooling resources, Church leaders hope to set the archdiocese up for “a more vibrant future” and to increase “the number of people who are actually practicing the faith,” Lerner said.

“Bringing these (resources) together, we believe that we can … position ourselves to do the real work, you know, which is to spread the gospel, rather than managing the decline,” he said.