Dec. 26—Closure of “one of the most beautiful churches in Niagara County” will begin in mid-2025 after the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo ordered the merger of All Saints and St. John the Baptist parishes and the shuttering and sale of St. Patrick’s church as part of its Road to Renewal plan in late summer. St. Brendan on the Lake’s Wilson worship site and Holy Trinity’s Middleport worship site are to be closed as well.
The diocese announced in late May its aim to close or merge about one-third of 160 parishes in Western New York, in response to trends including decreasing member attendance, decreasing availability of priests and ongoing financial pressure. The diocese previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a financial restructuring in the wake of hundreds of lawsuits filed under New York State’s Child Victims Act.
In eastern Niagara County, the Road to Renewal plan calls for:
— Merging All Saints with St. John’s and selling All Saints assets including St. Patrick’s church, 76 Church St., and the St. Joseph campus on Market Street. Also, St. John’s will sell its school building on Chestnut Street, relocate the Sister Helen Food Pantry, and remodel an apartment building for a priest’s residence.
The diocese’s release of its proposed mergers and closures list in June prompted a counterproposal from “Family 10” of which All Saints and St. John’s are members. While All Saints leadership agreed to a merger with St. John’s for the purpose of sharing a priest and other resources, they proposed keeping St. Patrick’s church open.
Regarding St. John’s, the final merger decree has it giving up some real estate as well. The original proposal called for proceeds of the sale of All Saints assets to go toward rehabilitation of the St. John’s education building, which All Saints trustee Paul Reid suggested was a waste considering that building’s decrepit condition.
— Closing of St. Brendan on the Lake parish’s Wilson site, Our Lady of the Rosary church. The parish holdings also include St. Charles Borromeo church in Olcott, where Sunday Mass is offered during in the spring and summer months , and St. Bridget church in Newfane. St. Brendan’s also is a member of Buffalo diocese Family 10, whose Road to Renewal counterproposal did not seek to save Our Lady of the Rosary from shutdown. Some who worship at OLR were frustrated by the targeting of their church, whose attendance numbers fell after the diocese’s 2007 round of mergers and closures led to a reduced number of masses in Wilson and, by extension, reduced attendance.
Currently the Wilson Community Food Pantry is operated from OLR and director Janet Hoffman said she hopes to find a new base of operations before the June 1, 2025 expiration of the pantry’s lease with the church.
— Closing of Holy Trinity parish’s Middleport worship site, St. Stephen’s church, and redirection of congregants to sister church St. Mary’s in Medina.
St. Stephen’s hosted the Middleport Food Pantry for several years and after the diocese announcement the pantry was relocated to The Hub, the Hartland Bible Church owned- and operated youth center.
— Reassignment of Our Lady of the Lake parish, based at St. Patrick’s church in Barker, to Family 10 with the Lockport and Newfane churches, from Orleans County-centered Family 11; and reassignment of Immaculate Conception, in Ransomville, from Family 10 to Family 34 covering Lower Niagara River communities. It’s expected that the three churches in Family 34 will share one priest by the year 2030.