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March 31, 2022By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
Sadness, acceptance and hope were among the reactions of people from Blackstone Valley parishes who learned last weekend that three out of five churches there are closing July 1.
“Of course there was sadness and even some anger, but I was inspired by the parishioners’ resilience, their encouragement of one another and their expressions of faith,” commented Father Nicholas Desimone, Pastor of St. Mary parish in Uxbridge. “I encouraged people to recognize that, by God’s grace, good can come even from our experiences of loss.”
Father Desimone is also administrator of three other parishes, except for St. Theresa’s, where Father Thien X. Nguyen is pastor.
Good Shepherd Parish in Linwood/Uxbridge is being united with St. Mary Parish at St. Mary’s Church. St. Augustine Parish in Millville and St. Theresa and St. Paul parishes in Blackstone are uniting as one yet-to-be-named parish at St. Paul’s Church.
“My family has come here for generations,” said St. Theresa parishioner Tammy Chevrette. “So it’s heart-breaking.” She said others say the church is just a building. But, added fellow-parishioner Carmen LaCasse, “It’s our building.”
“We as Catholics get very comfortable in our own churches,” said fellow parishioner John Marino. “I think the fear comes from walking into a church that is unknown to you. You feel like you need to be welcomed. We need to let those fears down, because whatever Catholic church you walk into, it’s your church.”
Mr. Marino was on St. Theresa’s team for the renewal process, which involved studying the five parishes and making a recommendation to Bishop McManus. Representatives from each parish worked with their own team and the other teams.
“It caused us to come together,” said Jason Cote, a team member and parish council chairman at Good Shepherd, finding a positive note amid the grieving. “We have to continue to walk together as a Catholic Church.… We’re all hopeful that we’re going to be able to merge our ministries.… We (Good Shepherd parishioners) like to connect with people and grow our family and bring some of our spirit wherever we go.” He said efforts must be made to bring people to church and spiritual life, or more churches will be closed.
Daniel Zabinski, St. Mary’s music director, said St. Mary’s is vibrant and growing and has been reaching out to Good Shepherd parishioners, some of whom “stayed active and did what they could to keep the Holy Spirit alive there,” despite dwindling membership. “Wherever they are, they will still do that,” he said.
“We kept having to go back to Christ – he has a plan,” said Toni Harvey, a St. Theresa’s team member and religious education coordinator. “They’re closing our church – that’s devastating! … I hope we stay together as a community family. Merging together we’ll grow.”
“When we were going to have to reorganize, we said, ‘Let’s get together,’” recalled Bertrand Galipeau, of St. Paul’s. He and fellow parishioner Celeste Oliver organized a pilgrimage to The National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge last fall that the priests and members of all five parishes participated in.
“We had a chance to talk about the upcoming changes,” he said. “It created a community. We’re thinking about going back this fall.”
Just because St. Paul’s isn’t closing doesn’t mean its people have nothing to do, he said; “the Holy Spirit is challenging us to help people to continue their faith journey” by welcoming them.
Mary Ann DeRestie, a St. Paul’s team member and business manager, said people are sad for those who are losing their churches. She is grateful that Father John L. Larochelle is becoming pastor, since he is presently associate pastor of all the churches except St. Theresa’s.
St. Theresa’s pastor, Father Nguyen, said they did all they could to preserve their parish, from fixing things to creating a Blessed Mother garden. Now he’s encouraging parishioners to follow Mary’s example of obedience, as she accepted the loss of her Son to save humanity.
Sandra Castiglioni, chairwoman of St. Theresa’s social committee, said she thinks welcoming, which includes evangelization, is her parish’s best attribute. She said she’d like to work with St. Augustine’s social committee to form a committee at St. Paul’s.
“I’ve been here 73 years … all my life,” said St. Augustine’s parishioner Leonard Desjardins. “We’ve been through changes – our original church burned.” He said he was clerk of the works for building the hall on the present church and his wife has decorated the altar for years, so the upcoming change is a loss for her, too. But St. Paul’s was the right choice, because of its number of parishioners and its central location, he said, and he wouldn’t object to keeping its name.
“It’ll be a great loss for me,” said Marcel Laplume, who coordinated or taught religious education at St. Augustine’s for 52 years, and does other ministries now.
But he knows people in Blackstone, and he and his wife, Jeannette, will go to St. Paul’s, where they were married, he said. After they moved to St. Augustine’s, she ran the food pantry supported by St. Augustine’s and the Blackstone parishes, he said, and, as a teenager, he belonged to St. Theresa’s.
Diane Moriarty, a St. Mary’s team member and pastoral associate, praised all the parish teams.
“We all understood the gravity of the situation but remained hopeful that through this work we can renew the Church in this area,” she said. “And we all know we’re part of the universal Church.”
