By Douglas Ditto
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
On a mild December morning, early worshipers observing the second Sunday of Advent straggled in and out of the grandiose Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on North Charles Street in Baltimore. An older man, who asked not to be identified due to his proximity to the matter, said he’d been a lifelong parishioner there and noticed new faces all around him. Just a week earlier, December 1st marked the date of expected completion for the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s ‘Seek the City to Come’ plan which called for many of the city’s Catholic churches to close and merge with larger parishes.
“We’re coming to terms with something that is a fact, we built too many churches,” he said.
The City that is Shapes the City to Come
The shakeup originated in fall of 2022 when Archbishop William E. Lori held listening sessions to discuss the initiative and the ‘Seek the City to Come’ plan was finalized in May. The plan entails merging the 61 existing parishes in Baltimore into 30 worship sites. According to archdiocesan publication “Catholic Review,” the 61 parishes were serving approximately 5,000 Catholics. To put that into perspective, that’s about 44% of the archdiocese’s parishes serving just 1% of the archdiocese’s parishioners.
Though similar closings have happened in other major U.S. cities like Chicago and St, Louis, the plan to shutter churches is especially notable in Baltimore because of the profound impact the Catholic Church has had in both the city and state. The history of Catholicism in Maryland is as old as the state itself, which was founded as a Catholic colony by Cecil Calvert in 1632. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is the oldest archdiocese in the United States, dating back to 1789. It was even given precedence over the rest of the country’s archdioceses when it received a “Prerogative of Place” by Pope Pius IX in 1858.
Despite Catholicism’s strong roots in Baltimore, the city has seen a shift in its religious demographics for decades now. With lifelong city residents moving to the surrounding counties as well as events like COVID hurting attendance at all religious venues, the city’s churches were seeing just a fraction of the number of worshippers they were originally built for.
These maps reflect the movement of Baltimore’s Catholic population from 2000 to 2010, with nearby counties like Howard and Harford County receiving an influx of the city’s former Catholic community. (PolicyMap)
Churches Hold Lifetimes of Memories
Numbers only tell part of the story though. They fail to account for the years of memories that the now-defunct parishes hold within their walls. For example, St. William of York, a parish located on Cooks Lane in West Baltimore recently closed its doors for good.
“I started at St. William’s school in kindergarten. I went to school from kindergarten to eighth grade there. I had my first confession, first communion, my confirmation there. I had my brother’s funeral and my father’s funeral and then I got married there,” said Danielle Remesch, a lifelong Catonsville resident. “Even though I didn’t attend all the time, just losing that building is going to be hard for me.”
Parishioners of St. William’s will now be seated at St. Agnes, a church located just a ten-minute drive down the road in southwest Baltimore.
“They’re trying their best to encourage people to go to St. Agnes from St. Williams and to bring that sense of community with them but it’s just not really the same,” said Remesch.
Closing churches were told by the archdiocese that they had to do so by December 1, 2024. This year December 1st fell on the first Sunday of Advent, a period that is meant for parishioners to prepare for the celebration of Christmas and Jesus’ birth.
“It’s Christmas time, it’s Thanksgiving time…there’s so much going on and so many things you want to feel connected to your church with and then you just can’t anymore,” Remesch added.
Remesch noted that she and her children will be visiting several other parishes in hopes of finding one that feels like home.
A Time of Preparation
The Cathedral of Mary Our Queen is one of the parishes gearing up to welcome new parishioners from not only the four parishes they are slated to merge with, but potentially from all across the Baltimore region. They created a hospitality ministry and invited parishioners from all 30 parishes that were set to close.
“What we chose to do this year was to go to each of these locations and ask what their outreach traditions were for the Christmas and Advent season,” said Alexandra Mihaly, the Cathedral’s pastoral associate. “All of our outreach initiatives this Advent and Christmas are an extension of existing outreach initiatives from those other parishes. A passing of the baton on those traditions if you will.”
The Cathedral announced this week that they will be holding an official welcoming mass on January 19, 2025.
“The intention there is to be an expression of the formal unification of all of our communities,” said Mihaly.