NEW YORK
USA Today
Rick Hampson, USA TODAY September 15, 2015
NEW YORK — The pope is coming to town, and ordinarily parishioners of Our Lady of Peace Church would be focused on trying to get tickets to the papal Mass at Madison Square Garden. Instead, they’re focused on trying to reverse the decision to close their parish.
Our Lady of Peace is one of scores of parishes closed or merged this year by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which Pope Francis visits Sept. 24 after a stop in Washington and before heading to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families.
Parishes like Our Lady of Peace epitomize the challenge facing Francis on his first U.S. visit: an American church in a slow-moving crisis of flagging membership, fewer priestly vocations and school and parish closings — all exacerbated by the lingering effects of the clergy child abuse scandal.
“It’s great the pope is coming, but look at all the closed churches,” says Janice Dooner Lynch, whose family joined Our Lady of Peace in 1921, two years after the parish was founded. “Our main concern now is, ‘What about us?’”
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