St. Stephen faithful protest to reopen beloved institution
“The way to get rid of a church is to get rid of the children. If we can’t have education for the children, that’ll be our death.”
Former director of religious education Maria Castillo
More than 60 supporters of St. Stephen Church gathered outside a downtown cathedral Sunday morning, demanding that the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston reopen their parish in the fast-gentrifying Washington Avenue Corridor without selling any of the church’s land or buildings.
People leaving Mass at CoCathedral of the Sacred Heart — the grandest and largest of the Catholic churches in Houston — saw a line of Latinos wearing dollar-store red scarves and holding handlettered signs that said things like “Unidos no
dividos” and “St. Stephen is not for sale.” On the sidewalk, the protesters stayed politely quiet, not chanting or singing, and answered cathedral worshipers’ questions only when asked.
Organizer Mary Carmen Gallegos explained that the congregation was locked out of their church in May 2016, after the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston merged St. Stephen with the smaller St. Joseph parish.
St. Stephen, a modest church building at the corner of Center and Silver streets, near downtown, is now surrounded by trendy breweries, art galleries and three-story townhomes. In 2014, a developer contacted the archdiocese about purchasing St. Stephen’s land. The archdiocese then closed the parish, stating that amid the rampant development, it “would struggle to thrive in the current location.”
The humble congregation, mostly Mexican immigrants and their families, refused to accept that ruling. Rain or shine, a group meets for prayers each Sunday on the sidewalk outside the boardedup church. To finance an appeal that took them all the way to the Vatican’s Supreme Court, St. Stephen loyalists sold tamales.
Astoundingly, they won: In April, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura ruled
against the archdiocese and in the congregation's favor. The Vatican ordered the archdiocese to undo the parish merger and reopen St. Stephen.
Roughly eight months later, the archdiocese has yet to announce when it will unlock the gate or how the churches will be separated. Now the loyalists believe that the archdiocese plans to sell roughly half of the St. Stephen land holdings before it reopens the parish.
Last week, Gallegos introduced herself to a work crew on the St. Stephen’s grounds. Steve Faught, the archdiocese’s director of construction and preventive maintenance, gave her his business card.
Gallegos says Faught told her the archdiocese is considering the sale of a block of St. Stephen’s property — land that includes the building for children’s religious education, housing for a priest and a parking lot.
Called by the Chronicle, Faught referred the matter to the archdiocese. “Steve Faught will not comment on the matter,” said archdiocese spokesperson Jo Ann Zuniga. “That was his preliminary visit to the church to do an assessment. There is nothing to update at this point.”
Zuniga also said that a Chronicle story about St. Stephen, published Dec. 25, contained errors, but the archdiocese has not yet specified any.
St. Stephen loyalists are particularly worried about the potential loss of the education building. Before the churches were merged, they say, roughly 300 children attended St. Stephen’s religious education classes. “The way to get rid of a church is to get rid of the children,” said former director of religious education Maria Castillo. “If we can’t have education for the children, that’ll be our death.”
The loyalists also say that the immigrant church’s humble parishioners, not the diocese, raised the money to buy that land in the first place and that their parish still needs all its land. “We need it to be complete,” said Rosie Cruz, who attended St. Stephen for more than 50 years. “I’m sure the diocese could get a good price. But it’s not fair.”