Dominican friars leave St. Mary’s Catholic Church in New Haven after 135 years

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NEW HAVEN – Dominican friars who served St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, the mother church of the Knights of Columbus, will hand over oversight of the parish to the Archdiocese of Hartford after 135 years.

The brothers, who are members of the Province of Saint Joseph, based in New York, declared that they renounced the pastoral charge of Saint Mary’s Church and the priority in January 2022 “with deep sadness” but with “deepest gratitude for the privilege of serving the people of New Haven since 1886.”

Reverend John Paul Walker has been pastor of St. Mary’s for six years. St. Joseph’s Church on Edwards Street merged with St. Mary in June 2017.


In a statement, the Dominican brethren said they were leaving at the request of Archbishop Leonard Blair, who they said “is undertaking a reconfiguration of Catholic churches in New Haven.”

“After more than a century of service to the people of Saint Mary’s Church, the handing over of the parish to the Archdiocese is disappointing,” said the Right Reverend Kenneth Letoile, Prior Provincial of the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph , in the press release.

“While we would have liked to continue serving in the Archdiocese of Hartford, the pastoral ministries we accept should not only benefit the local church, but should also enable us to fully live our form of religious life and to serve as a way that allows our charism to flourish.

The brothers will continue their work at Quinnipiac University, Albertus Magnus College and with the Knights of Columbus. Another Dominican will be appointed chaplain to the Dominican nuns of the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace in Guilford.

In a letter to the parishioners of St. Mary, posted on the parish website, Walker wrote that after the first phase of parish mergers in 2017, “The Archdiocese is now entering the second phase of the planning process. pastoral, which will amalgamate several parishes in New Haven into a single municipal parish, centered on St. Mary’s Church.

Erika Ahern of Hamden, whose family has been a member of St. Mary’s for almost 11 years, said she would feel great loss without the Dominican priests. “One of the reasons we came to Connecticut was to be near the Dominican parish, so it’s a devastating decision by the Archdiocese to remove the Dominicans,” she said. . “It’s hard to understand the motivations behind this.”

Ahern and her husband Todd have six children between the ages of 2 and 16. “We see in our own culture this need for a charism of preaching of faith, of study, so we have the courage to live our faith in more and more secularized and anti-Catholic and anti-Christian”, a- she declared.

Ahern, who is a member of the parish’s mothers group and founded the Siena Girls Club, said she did not understand why Dominicans were being fired when the archdiocese was short of priests. “We certainly have concerns about how the soul care of parishioners will look like,” Ahern said. “We just don’t have enough priests. “

She said that although the Archdiocese does not earn any priesthood diploma this year, the Dominicans, known as the Order of Preachers, “are growing from year to year. They ordain several priests each year.

Reverend Jordan Lenaghan, one of the Dominican friars who lives at the priory of St. Mary, confirmed that the Dominican order is on the increase. “We’re growing really fast actually,” he said. “Our median age for a brother in the province is in his forties, we have a lot of vocations. The Province of Saint Joseph stretches from New England to Virginia and Indiana.

“The story with Saint Dominic is that he founded the Dominicans to go to areas where the Catholic faith seems to be dying,” Ahern said. She said that Saint Mary had just celebrated the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Dominic, “so it is a difficult year to have this news”.

Lenaghan is the executive director of religious life at Quinnipiac and part-time chaplain at Albertus, ministries he will continue once he leaves Hillhouse Avenue.

“It’s disappointing, as our provincial said, because we’ve been here for 135 years and we’ve been living in the same building since I think 1915,” he said. “There is a sadness in this. “

He and Walker said they understand the Archbishop’s responsibility to make decisions in the best interests of the Archdiocese, which is made up of the counties of New Haven, Hartford and Litchfield. “We support this and pray for its success,” Lenaghan said.

“Obviously I’m very sad about it,” Walker said. “Being here in St. Mary’s has been a great blessing for me personally over the past six years. He said the brothers are supportive of Blair “and understanding that at this point he believes this change is for the best and that we will continue to serve faithfully here until the very last day the change takes place.”

St. Mary’s, which was built in 1874, houses the tomb of Blessed Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, whom Pope Francis beatified in October 2020. Beatification is a step towards holiness.

In a statement, the archdiocese said it had asked the Dominicans to leave because Saint Mary is “particularly suited as the center of a municipal pastoral model with several priests living together and serving the ten churches in the city” . The archdiocese has consolidated churches and is considering other projects, he said.

The number of Catholics in New Haven has grown from 70,000 in the 1930s to 10,000 today.

The statement said the Dominicans were willing to give up being pastors of St. Mary’s, but were unwilling to leave the neighboring priory on Hillhouse Avenue because it has “traditional and emotional significance to them.” The priory belongs to the archdiocese.

The statement said the archdiocese offered other options, such as overseeing St. Joseph’s Church and moving to another rectory. “None of these possibilities were accepted by the Dominicans, and unfortunately, they will take leave of their residence in the archdiocese,” the statement said.

He added that the Archdiocese will host the individual ministry of the brothers and offer help to find them a residence.

In his letter, Walker said, “The Archdiocese has asked the Dominican Province to consider three new ministries in the Archdiocese as an alternative to St. Mary’s. As each of them would imply a radically new configuration of Dominican life and mission in the archdiocese, the Dominican Province has decided to evaluate these new offers during our next provincial chapter, which will take place in June 2022.

St. Mary’s, the oldest Catholic parish in New Haven and the second oldest in Connecticut, was founded in 1832. After a fire destroyed the original church on York Street in 1848, the current church has was built and consecrated in 1874.

McGivney was appointed assistant pastor and founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882. The Knights undertook a major renovation of the church 100 years later, including a steeple, which had never been erected.

In March 1998, a three-alarm fire severely damaged St. Mary’s, and in January 2010, a 5-by-20-foot section of the steeple ruptured.

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