Ex-Catholic parish church in Bethlehem to go on sale

Maintenance costs cited in closure of St. Joseph’s hall

A former parish church building in Bethlehem will close and be offered for sale, according to a news release from the Diocese of Allentown.

The building, St. Joseph’s Church Hall on East Fifth Street in south Bethlehem, has been used very sparingly over the past 12 years, according to the release. It holds just one regular mass per year, on the Feast Day of St. Joseph’s, and hosts funerals for former parishioners.

A shortage of priests and resources prompted the Allentown Diocese in 2008 to close 47 churches, including five in South Bethlehem, which consolidated to form a new parish, Incarnation of Our Lord.

Incarnation of Our Lord on nearby Pierce Street took ownership of St. Joseph’s building.

The arrangement that provided limited use of the St. Joseph’s building was a compromise between the Vatican and disappointed former parishioners, who had appealed the consolidation. In 2012, the diocese began allowing the limited use of St. Joseph’s Church.

But according to Monday’s news release, the cost of maintaining St. Joseph’s is more than the diocese can handle. The building has been shrouded in scaffolding for years because of structural issues and deteriorating stone on the building’s exterior.

“Paying for the maintenance of the building has become a significant financial hardship for Incarnation parish, and the parish sought permission from the Diocese to close and sell the St. Joseph building,” the news release said.

To Stephen Antalics, a Bethlehem resident who challenged the terms of the South Bethlehem churches’ merger back in 2008, St. Joseph’s impending closure is a “great loss” to the city. St. Joseph’s was founded by Slovenian immigrants in 1914 and is one of Bethlehem’s last remaining ethnic churches.

Antalics, a first-generation Slovenian-American, grew up attending Mass and school at St. Joseph’s. He said he is in the midst of putting together a “last-ditch effort” to buy the church, contacting the Slovenian Consulate General and other Slovenian-American groups nationwide to preserve its history.

“I can’t feel anything but the greatest sadness and remorse, and the only thing I can do is work to see that it stays open, whatever that means,” Antalics said.

The church will hold a final Mass on March 18 for the Feast Day of St. Joseph.