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	A Third of Catholic Churches Shut down in Small Quebec City By Tu Thanh Ha The Globe and Mail January 7, 2008 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080107.wchurches07/BNStory/National/home MONTREAL — In nearly six decades playing the organ at her Quebec parish, Colette McCarthy witnessed historic changes in the Roman Catholic liturgy, as celebrations switched from Latin to French and mixed choirs were introduced. But the most significant trend she noticed was that each year there were fewer priests, fewer masses and fewer churchgoers. And so it was that yesterday, the first Sunday of 2008, Mrs. McCarthy's hometown of Rimouski found itself with a third of its Catholic churches closed. "People are really sad here. It's very hard what we're living through," Mrs. McCarthy said. As the influence of the Catholic Church has waned in Quebec in the past four decades, churches have closed and the buildings found new life as condos, libraries or even a school for circus performers. But those cases tend to occur in bigger cities such as Montreal or Quebec City. What was striking yesterday was that it happened in the hinterland, and to such a scale that three of nine churches in the diocese of Rimouski shut down as of Jan. 1. The remaining six churches, which used to serve three parishes, have been consolidated into a single parish. "It was too tough administratively to keep them open," said Guy-Réjean Pineault, the head of the St-Germain Fabric, the local church administrative committee. The diocese didn't have enough priests and couldn't afford the heating and maintenance of underused churches, he said. By comparison, about one-10th of Montreal's 300 parishes have closed. Last year, a legislature committee heard that since the 1970s, about 250 places of worship have closed in Quebec, most of them Roman Catholic. "It's just too bad, really too bad," said Mrs. McCarthy, recalling a bygone time when she would be asked to play three masses each Sunday, in addition to vespers and services every evening in May to honour the Virgin Mary. Today, she said, young people prefer spending time playing hockey or, in the summer, baseball. Sitting on the shores of the lower St. Lawrence River, 320 kilometres downriver from Quebec City, Rimouski is a city of 42,000 people, overwhelmingly old-stock francophones. A report by the local diocese last year noted that at the campus of the University of Quebec, the Catholic pastoral room has been converted into a prayer room for Muslim students. Even more precipitous than the drop in Catholic worshippers has been the drop in men willing to enter the priesthood. In some parts of the nearby Gaspésie region, one priest could be responsible for up to 10 parishes, visiting them in rotation. Increasingly, some church duties had to be assumed by lay people. Mr. Pineault said his vestry hopes to sell the three churches to groups that will use them for community purposes. Among potential buyers are a low-cost housing co-operative and a community group for elderly people. Mr. Pineault was reluctant to give details but local papers said the vestry was disappointed that it only received bids ranging from as low as just $10,000 to $180,000 for each of the churches. As she wondered what would happen to the vintage Casavant organ she played for 58 years, Mrs. McCarthy echoed Mr. Pineault's fears that more bad news loomed ahead. "It's possible other churches will have to close," Mr. Pineault remarked. In Montreal, some of the Catholic parishes have remained active, having replenished their flocks from the ranks of devout newcomers from Vietnam, Haiti and Latin America. "We ought to have more immigrants here," said Mr. Pineault.
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