Vatican overturns Holy Rosary parish closure: parishioners

Decision doesn't have a veto over episcopal corporation's sale of properties to pay for abuse claims

Members of Holy Rosary Parish in Portugal Cove-st. Philip's say the Vatican has overturned the archbishop’s decision to suppress the parish after it was sold in 2022 to raise money to settle the claims of sexual abuse victims.

Parishioner Ed Martin, who led an appeal to the global headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church against the suppression of the parish, told Saltwire Wednesday he received word last month that the Dicastery for the Clergy had overturned Archbishop Peter Hundt’s decision to close the parish and relegate it to “profane use” — the term used when a closed Roman Catholic church will no longer be used for that purpose – merging it with Holy Trinity in Torbay.

“I always held up hope that (an appeal to the Vatican) could be successful, and the big thing was, we were hoping that someone would actually look at the case in the Vatican because it doesn’t always get to that point,” Martin said. “So, if somebody actually looked at our case, we thought we stood a chance.”

Holy Rosary was one of the properties the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s (RCECSJ) sold to raise funds to settle the claims of those who were sexually abused by certain Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel Orphanage in the 1940s, ’50s and ‘60s, and clergy in other areas of the archdiocese.

The courts have found the episcopal corporation vicariously liable for the abuse. It was granted creditor protection while it sold churches and other properties to collect the funds for the financial settlement, and that settlement process, involving more than 150 claimants, is underway.

In an effort to save their church, a group of Holy Rosary parishioners raised tens of thousands of dollars through an online crowdfunding platform and successfully bid on a parcel of the land, including the church building.

However, the parish was closed all the same, with Hundt celebrating the final mass there in October 2022.

That’s when Martin and others took the case to the Vatican, basing their appeal on issues of canon law, the law of the church.

“There are two or three main points,” Martin told Saltwire. “First was that the archdiocese didn’t take into account what's called the patrimony of the church, the history of the churches, the beauty, all those sorts of things.”

More importantly, Martin said, the RCECSJ didn’t follow the proper process. He suggested the archdiocese didn’t have the right to sell the parish assets to pay the abuse claims.

“Canon law lays out very specifically what an archdiocese is to do when they plan to close the parish and close a church,” he said. “They didn’t follow the church's law, and the Vatican said very clearly that they did not follow that canon law.”

Martin said Hundt has so far not responded to his request for a meeting.

While the Vatican’s decision may pave the way for the parish to reopen, it doesn’t have a veto over the RCECSJ’S insolvency process and doesn’t affect the sale of church properties.

Even if the archdiocese didn’t follow canonical process, it did follow the correct civil process, said Geoff Budden, one of the lawyers representing the claimants against the episcopal corporation.

“The appeal was against the archbishop’s decision to suppress the parish, which is a decision taken within his spiritual authority and can be appealed via canonical law through the channels up to the Vatican, which was successfully done,” Budden said.

“It shouldn’t impact the corporation’s decision, within insolvency or otherwise, to dispose of a physical building.”