By Jake Pearson, Mike McLaughlin, Ryan Strong and Erin Durkin
New York Daily News
November 15, 2010
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/11/15/2010-11-15_clerics_charge_that_bklyn_dem_boss_lopez_playing_politics_influenced_closing_or_.html
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| Brooklyn Assemblyman - and borough Democratic boss - Vito Lopez is being accused of political input in reorganization of Brooklyn Diocese. |
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| Priests making accusations include the Revs. John Powis (above) and Steve Lynch (below). |
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Pastors for two Catholic churches at the center of a sweeping remake of the Brooklyn Diocese say they're being targeted for tangling with borough Democratic boss Vito Lopez.
"Vito has never been a good benefit to our part of the community," said the Rev. Steve Lynch, pastor of St. Lucy-St. Patrick Church in Fort Greene, which will be merged with a neighboring church. "He's cast us as a stepchild, and this is an example of that."
Lopez and Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio are politically tight - the bishop even lenthisvoice to eyebrow-raising robocalls praising the Bushwick assemblyman.
Spokesmen for the bishop and Lopez denied politics is at play in the church reorganization.
Three of the five churches named yesterday in the start of a wide-ranging plan to shutter and merge churches have been at odds with Lopez and DiMarzio over policy and local development.
The Brooklyn Diocese, which also covers Queens, is likely to announce more closings and mergers as it deals with dwindling cash and shrinking congregations.
"The plan itself to do this by the diocese is excellent and it's necessary, but the way [they started] it leads us to believe there's something else going on here," said the Rev. John Powis, whose St.Michael-St. Edward Church is to be closed in January.
"It's unfortunate, and I think it probably has to do with our work and the assemblyman," said Powis, whose church serves a small congregation in the basement of an old church near the Ingersoll Houses, a public housing project.
The diocese dismissed the allegations by the two priests, and some parishioners.
"They're not the only ones to be reconfigured," Msgr. Kieran Harrington, a spokesman for DiMarzio, said of the churches that have been thorns in the bishop's side.
"It has nothing to do with it," he insisted. "Absolutely nothing to do with it."
The church's reorganization plans additionally shutter Our Lady of Montserrat in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Two Crown Heights parishes, St. Gregory the Great and St. Ignatius, will also merge with nearby churches.
Diocesan officials said the churches were picked because of money problems, dwindling congregations or decrepit buildings.
Many churchgoers, who learned of the moves at Mass yesterday, said they smelled politics.
Montserrat, St. Michael-St. Edward, and St. Lucy-St. Patrick are members of a local coalition fighting the Lopez-backed Broadway Triangle development project in Williamsburg, as is Sacred Heart Church, which will absorb some parishioners.
Broadway Triangle is a massive affordable housing project controlled in part by Lopez's scandal-scarred Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, which is under investigation on multiple fronts.
Pastors at all four parishes allowed supporters of City Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Bushwick) to campaign outside their churches before the 2009 city elections, handing out material critical of Lopez and his handpicked challenger to Reyna, Powis said.
Montserrat's pastor, the Rev. Jim O'Shea, said that the Brooklyn Diocese forced him to resign in 2008 as head of a community group, Churches United, after heclashed with Lopez over Broadway Triangle and other developments. The diocese denied the allegation.
O'Shea's supporters said it was part of a quid pro quo in return for Lopez's help killing a bill that would have eased the statute of limitations for child-sex-abuse suits.
O'Shea wasn't in the pulpit yesterday, but parishioners were floored by the news.
"We were blindsided," said Juan Ramos, a Montserrat parishioner and head of the anti-Broadway Triangle coalition. "They're using the financial situation as a disguise to punish some of the churches that have been connected to community fights."
Lopez spokeswoman Debra Feinberg said the Democratic boss was "saddened to learn" of the closures and mergers, adding that he's fought to keep churches economically viable.
"Assemblyman Lopez has had no discussions with the diocese regarding church closures nor is he involved in any way in creating or implementing the policies of the Catholic Church," she said. "Any assertion that the assemblyman has any role whatsoever in the policies of the church is misleading and categorically false."
With Henrick Karoliszyn
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