How to save your church from closure
As we join the Sunday Telegraph's Save Our Churches campaign Ed West and Mark Greaves report on how parishioners can keep their churches open
30 May 2008

Leader

A drastic shortage of priests over the next few years means that, inevitably, churches in England and Wales will have to close. But dioceses often decide the fate of parishes without a genuine attempt to consult the laity - and sometimes the decisions they make are wrong. So ordinary Catholics should try to make their voices heard, even if Church officials do not want to hear them.

ENGAGE WITH THE BISHOP

The bishop is the prince of his diocese and all power lies with him. Letters to Rome are almost entirely pointless: Vatican officials can intervene if the procedure has not been followed correctly but they cannot make the bishop change his mind.

Some Canon Law experts claim that parishioners must provide their consent before a church can be closed. In practice, though, bishops can ignore the views of parishioners quite easily.

FIND OUT WHY IT'S BEING CLOSED

Dioceses should be accountable and transparent. They should not only explain why a church is being closed but should publish any reports or figures which they have used to make their judgment. So, for instance, if surveyors have assessed a building then their report should be made available to everyone. In some cases parishioners are told that their church requires millions of pounds of repair work; later they discover that some of the repairs have already been carried out and that the rest of the costs were vastly over-estimated.

AVOID ANGRY RHETORIC

It is easy to get infuriated by the intransigence of some Church authorities. But campaigners should beware of using over-heated language - it will only harm their cause. Accusing diocesan officials of being greedy, malicious, deceitful, or being part of a vast conspiracy, is definitely not going to help save a church from closure.

TRY SPOT LISTING

Many Catholic churches are not listed even though they should be. In several recent cases parishioners have managed to save their church from demolition by applying to English Heritage to get it listed. Dioceses do not generally like this, even though the listing is merely a recognition of value and can help in funding repairs. But it takes power away from the diocese, which can no longer demolish the church and then build afresh (which often seems like the most trouble-free option).

BE IMMIGRANT FRIENDLY

Two churches in the centre of Hull were heading for closure until their congregations were boosted by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and South Asia. That situation is being repeated across the country, especially in city centres which had previously been emptied of Catholics. And a buoyant congregation will persuade a diocese to keep a church open even if nothing else will. If there are new immigrants in the area, make sure the diocese takes advantage of it and organises foreign-language Masses.

SEEK OUTSIDE FUNDING

The Catholic Church is very bad at seeking funds from outside agencies. The biggest source of cash is the joint English Heritage and Lottery grants scheme: it hands out £25 million a year to churches in England alone. In March, for instance, All Saints Church in Barton-upon-Irwell, Manchester, won £481,000 to heal damage caused by dry rot.

Another important source of funding is the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme, which reimburses VAT spent on repairs to listed churches and pays out £12 million a year in England. Other sources include county trusts as well as the National Churches Trust.

Our Lady Star of the Sea, built in the shape of a ship's upturned hull in Anglesey, north Wales, was closed in 2004 for safety reasons. Earlier this year campaigners won £150,000 from Cadw, the Welsh equivalent of English Heritage, to help repair the electrical system and make the building waterproof.

BROADEN USE OF BUILDINGS

Similarly, the Church is not canny about broadening the use of its buildings to bring in extra cash. Anglicans are much better at it, partly because they are happy to use their churches in ways quite distinct from worship.

St Paul's Church in Bow, East London, closed in 1991 because of concerns over its safety; parishioners feared it would be sold and converted into flats. But the church council raised £3.3 million to redevelop the building and, incredibly, managed to fit into the building's four floors an art gallery, a café, a gym (with specialist therapy for the disabled) and even a sauna.

Another example is the tiny corrugated-iron church of St Mary's in County Durham, which has unbolted its pews to create the only youth club in the area. And two other Anglican churches - St Bega's in Eskdale, Cumbria, and the church of St Mary and St Radegund, Whitwell, Isle of Wight - double up as post offices for their local communities.

Rebecca Payne, a Church of England policy officer, points out that schemes such as these do not necessarily solve a church's financial problems - you can't deal with a million-pound repair bill simply by installing a couple of bench presses in the presbytery. But at least the the wider community relies on its church then it is more likely to campaign against its closure and raise money on its behalf."



CASE STUDIES

St Peter and St Paul, the Wirral

The enormous copper-domed basilica of Ss Peter and Paul is one of the most prominent landmarks on the Wirral coast. Known to sailors as the Dome of Home, it can be seen from miles out at sea and was built with money raised by Fr Tom Mullins - the "Pope of Wirral" - during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Last year the Diocese of Shrewsbury announced that it intended to close the church within two years. It said the building was too expensive to run and needed about £1.4 million in repair work over the next decade.

Immediately a campaign group was set up to oppose the plans. Catholic Cllr Tony Pritchard organised a petition with more than 1,000 signatures and a group which called itself SOUL (Save Our Unique Landmark) began to think up ways that the church and presbytery could be used for the wider community. By turning it into a drop-in centre or a venue for concerts and exhibitions they believed that extra money could be raised for the repairs.

Letters were sent to the Vatican, the bishop and the Prince of Wales (he replied with a message of support). After months of campaigning parishioners finally met their bishop - Bishop Brian Noble of Shrewsbury - who said that closure was not, after all, inevitable.

And last week there seemed to be a glimmer of hope. Campaigners received a letter from Mgr Giovanni Carru, under-secretary at the Congregation for Clergy, who said there were "no current plans" to close the church. Which, given the announcement last year, seems rather surprising. A statement from the diocesan spokesman said that a decision had not yet been made and that three options were still being considered: to build a new church, to move the parish into an Anglican church, or to keep the present church. Some speculate that the diocese was forced by Rome to withdraw its "decree of closure" because it had not followed Canon Law correctly - but no one knows for sure.

A year on from the original announcement there is still a lot of bitterness among parishioners, who claim that the diocese had given up on the church years ago. It no longer funds repairs - parishioners say that in order to clear the gutter they had to pay for it themselves - and it has stopped providing a mid-morning Sunday Mass. Instead there is just one Sunday Mass at 8.30am, an arrangement blamed for the drop in weekly attendance from 400 to about 200 to 250 (the church can seat 650). The diocese, on the other hand, says that "a large number of parishioners" support its plans.

St Michael's, Ancoats

The church at the heart of Manchester's Little Italy was closed four years ago but remains in limbo, while its parishioners hold weekly vigils outside.

St Michael's troubles began in 2001 when the North West Development Agency (NWDA), a Government "regeneration" quango, made a compulsory purchase order for the church and three attached buildings as part of its programme for the area.

The diocese objected, but then changed its mind, and the church was closed in January 2004. According to the Save St Michael's Campaign, the NWDA has told parishioners that they were happy for the church to remain open, especially as the area is to house an extra 15,000 people.

But Bishop Brain of Salford says the church has to close because of falling congregation numbers. It is one of 15 churches in the diocese earmarked for closure.

St Michael's has particular emotional appeal because it was the focus of the city's Italian community, which formed when thousands of Italian immigrants took up jobs in the cotton industry.

The church was built in 1858 and became home to Mancunian Italians, who numbered 3,000 in 1910. Today there are around 25,000 people of Italian descent in Greater Manchester, but the community has integrated and left the area and so, it could be argued, taken the church's reason for being with it. But not according to the 50 or so parishioners who turn up to its locked gates every Sunday, as well as the 60 Africans who turned up in January 2004 for weekly Mass only to find it was closed.

"We had two weeks' notice of this closure," says Stella Newton (above, second from left, with former Manchester United footballers Alex Stepney, Paddy Crerand and Brian Kidd), who is the most high-profile parishioner, having chained herself, Suffragette-style, to the church last year. "Now it's in limbo. The agency has offered to save St Michael's but without the bishop we can't have it as a church. We're in negotiations with them but it belongs to the parishioners."

The group has tried to keep the church open with a weekly vigil-cum-protest with 40 regulars and up to 100 or 150 on some days.

"We've been outside praying for four years. Unofficially we've had priests come along and give a blessing. They're disgusted."

The group has taken its complaints to every level of authority, but have failed to elicit a response.

"We've gone to the papal nuncio," she says. "We hand-delivered letters. We sent 16 letters to Rome and only one came back. We've written to Rome. We've been to the Cardinal, who just does a Pontius Pilate. They don't want to know."

While the dispute goes on, the key event for the parish versus diocese battle is the 120-year-old annual Madonna del Rosario procession, a celebration of the city's Italian heritage that begins at the church every June. This year it will be held on Sunday June 29, Ss Peter and Paul's day. As in other years the Save St Michael's campaigners have invited Bishop Brain to attend.

At last year's procession Mrs Newton and other members of the Save St Michael's group were locked out on "health and safety risk" grounds, according to a letter from the NWDA.

The group has continued to use the building to prepare the seven-foot-high statues of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Calvary and St John for the procession, but the NWDA offered them alternative storage in a building two streets away, something Mrs Newton said was unacceptable. The NWDA said that as well as the ubiquituous health and safety using the building for religious purposes was "in contravention of Canon Law".

The church's future is still in the air, although offices, flats and "new community use" are the most likely. However, the downturn in the housing market may save it, if nothing else.

Mrs Newton is angry that the hierarchy has not shown any interest in attracting the area's incomers.

"What sort of message does that send out, that there will be 15,000 people and no Catholics? We still get people visiting who thought the church was open. I didn't put my money in the box for a conference centre.

"It's disgraceful. If they worked for a firm they'd get the sack. Our churches are empty and they're leading us into oblivion. They're having conference after conference because they don't speak to the people. There are plenty of Catholics but no Christians."

Sacred Heart Church, Liverpool

Sacred Heart Church in Hindsford was closed four years ago. Since then a dedicated team of volunteers has kept the building in excellent shape by cleaning, Hoovering and polishing it; they have even had advice from police about how to stop it from being vandalised.

Before the church was closed it was a thriving parish with a weekly attendance of 300. The problem was not a dwindling congregation, but mining subsidence, which meant that the ground the church was built on could, in theory, collapse without warning. The diocese claims that subsidence has caused "significant structural problems" in the building and that it is now unsafe. Parishioners dispute this, and claim that the only problem is a £260,000 repair bill.

The diocese says it has not yet made a decision about the future of the church. It initially planned to demolish the building and put up a new one - but this was abandoned in 2001 after parishioners managed to get it Grade 2 listed. (The church, built in 1869, was designed by Edmund Kirby, a student of Pugin, and is a shining example of early English Gothic architecture.)

Two months ago parishioners were told that the diocese had applied to change the deeds of the church - which stipulate that it cannot be used for anything other than worship - so that it can be sold to developers.

Technically the parish still exists, and Masses are held in a nearby town. But not everyone can do the trip each week, and some of the congregation were so dismayed by the closure of their church that they stopped attending Mass completely.

Parishioners are frustrated because they do not understand why the diocese has not applied for funding from bodies such as the English Heritage. Before the church was closed they made sure it was used by the wider community: concerts were performed there and teenagers acted out a mime of the Passion. They argue that by using the building for a range of activities money could be raised for repairs and it could once again become a place of worship.

St Peter and St Paul, Kent

Parishioners were left "speechless" and "flabbergasted" on Sunday, February 11, 2007, when Mgr Richard Moth, vicar-general of the archdiocese of Southwark, announced during Mass that the church was to close. One parishioner shouted out "You have lorded it over us" during the homily.

It seemed an unlikely choice for a closure; this part of Kent, a working-class suburb populated with ex-Londoners, has a growing immigrant population, and Mass attendances are going up. The congregation had grown by more than a quarter in the three months before the closure and Mass attendances had increased 60 per cent in the last year.

Back in March 2003 Archbishop McDonald of Southwark sent parishioner Doreen Fladon a letter in which he informed her: "I wish to assure you that I have no plans for closure."

Parishioners accused the diocese of putting money ahead of the needs of parishioners by closing a "thriving parish worth £2m to developers".

Campaigners gathered 134 signatures for a petition and sent them to Archbishop McDonald. Tory MP John Horam also said he would write to the archbishop, and letters of objection were sent to Bromley Council by parishioners and an environmental group. Residents, fearing increased congestion, said that development would damage wildlife, birds, badgers, foxes and bats, and that there was evidence a Roman road ran through the area; English Heritage recommended an assessment.

The campaign to save St Peter and St Paul was led by the tireless parishioner Geoffrey Prendergast, 71. He wrote to canon lawyer Clarence Gallagher SJ; to Mauro Piacenza, secretary to the Titular Archbishop of Vittoriana; to Claudio Cardinal Hummes OFM of the Congregation for Clergy; to the Washington Theological Union and to Mgr Tadeusz Kukla, vicar-delegate for Poles in England and Wales, to see if it could be turned into a parish for Poles. All, ultimately, to no avail. Mr Prendegast tried to use Canon Law, but while the archbishop admitted that "insufficient information" had been given to parishioners, he had correctly consulted the Council of Priests in accordance with Canon 515.2.

The church was closed in April. The diocese plans to build a new church in St Mary Cray, too far for many older parishioners to go. It seems many will not bother: Mr Prendergast said in his letters that evangelical churches were attracting Catholics in the area. He also conducted a survey of parishioners - 30 said they would go to nearby St Joseph's, 20 would go to other parishes, and 100 would stop going to Mass altogether.

St Walburge's, Preston

Last year news that the Diocese of Lancaster was to close 10 churches in England's Catholic heartland was made worse by the fact that the list of threatened churches included "the jewel of Lancashire". Built in 1854, St Walburge's stands at 309 ft and is the tallest church in Britain (and only four cathedrals surpass it). It was paid for by Preston's "poor, proud, papist" population, or as The Times put it: "The expression of the intense piety of some of the poorest people in England."

But Mass attendance in Lancaster has fallen by two-thirds since 1974 and the diocese found itself in £10m of debt, while St Walburge's has a congregation of only 100 a week. Nearby St Mark's church has already been turned into flats.

The campaign was led by Cllr Margaret McManus, a parishioner of 30 years, who said: "St Walburge's is the gem of the churches in Preston and we should be thinking about giving it cathedral status rather than closing it.

"This is our heritage. The people of Preston built and paid for these churches. It isn't our fault that the diocese hasn't used their funds efficiently enough."

In November it was also reported that the Italian-based Institute of Christ the King wanted to take over the running of the church. A private donor reportedly offered to give £100,000 if the Institute was given the go-ahead.

In March the diocese published a document that explained how parishes could be organised: "Sacred Heart, Preston, and St Walburge, Preston, already linked, [will] merge into a new parish soon." St Walburge's would no longer be used for Mass by 2010.

While the document recognised the importance of St Walburge's as a Grade 1 listed building, it stated: "It is very large and it is accepted that it is too costly to be maintained by the parish or the diocese."

Rumours circulate of the church being made into either an inter-faith centre or a conference centre, something the bishop has called "absolute rubbish".

Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue told the Herald: "This is hype at the parish level to try and dissuade us. We have a mission review. The finding will be published at the end of July, and they're trying to put pressure on us."

But while St Walburge's has one of the smallest congregations of the endangered, its future is the most secure, if only because outside agencies may well provide the £2.5m that will be needed to save the church. In March the English Heritage and Lottery Fund joint grants scheme gave £134,000 for repairs.