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Chicago protestors arrested in bid to stop church sale

Five Chicago Catholics were arrested Tuesday as they protested the removal of a Pietà statue from a shuttered local Catholic church.

The arrests came after months of protests, as demonstrators have tried to prevent both a sale of the St. Adalbert’s church building in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, and the removal of a large Pietà statue, which was relocated Tuesday to a nearby parish church.

As the statue was loaded onto a flatbed truck outside St. Adalbert’s, five protesters reportedly attempted to block the truck were arrested, a Chicago police spokesman told media. Charges have not yet been filed.

NOW: A few former parishioners of St. Adalbert’s were detained after blocking the truck carrying the La Pietà statue, which was removed from Adalbert’s after months of demonstrations by local faithfuls. It’s currently being moved to St Paul’s.
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— Colin Boyle (@colinbphoto) November 29, 2022

According to a group calling itself the St. Adalbert’s Rosary Group, the five demonstrators arrested were Władysław Domaradzka, Andrezj Bobak, Judy Vazquez, Roman Waksmundzki, and Rosa Ibanez.

The St. Adalbert Rosary Group says it is “an assembly of former congregants of the St. Adalbert Church who pray the rosary multiple times each week outside the church and on Sundays outside Holy Name Cathedral in Spanish, Polish, and English with the intention of saving the church.

“The group also actively holds on-site vigils to preserve the church and its sacred objects, including a full-sized replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà, from plunder, and seeks to reopen the church as a Catholic shrine, monastery, or church,” according to the group.

In a statement to The Pillar Tuesday, the group said that “St. Adalbert’s was paid for through the great sacrifices of Polish immigrants who came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people who made it their highest priority to conform their wills to the Will of God. Churches such as St. Adalbert’s testify to that. It was created to last forever.”

The statement continued: “Cardinal Cupich recently sold the parking lot at his Holy Name Cathedral for over $100 million … Could some of this not be used to preserve the historic epicenter of Chicago’s Polish Catholic culture? If not, can’t we at least be given the opportunity to fund its preservation through other means?”

An undated historic photo of St. Adalbert’s Church. public domain.

St. Adalbert’s Parish was founded in 1874, in a neighborhood of then mostly Polish immigrants. As the neighborhood changed, the parish adapted to demographic shifts, and began offering Spanish-language Masses and devotional practices drawing from the largely Mexican population of the Pilsen neighborhood.

Parishioners receive Holy Communion during a Mass at St. Adalbert’s Parish church, in Chicago, Illinois. Courtesy: St. Adalbert’s Rosary Group.

In 2016, Cardinal Blase Cupich issued a decree merging the parish into neighboring St. Paul’s Parish, and announced plans to close the church itself. When parishioners pushed back, the cardinal announced the church would stay open, but be listed for sale.

But citing declining attendance and more than $3 million needed in repairs, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced in 2019 that the church itself would close.

The rosary group says the church could be maintained as a self-sustaining shrine or oratory, and that the archdiocese should prioritize plans to attempt such a project before selling the property to a developer.

A spokesman said the group has developed a plan for the church’s ongoing maintenance that could involve the support of a religious order to staff its sacramental and devotional needs, and the financial support of philanthropists interested in historic preservation — with the goal that the church could become financially solvent.

But that prospect has reportedly not gotten a hearing from the archdiocese, the group says.

A covered statue removed from the St. Adalbert Church property Nov. 29, through a hole in the side of the church building. Courtesy photo.

According to the rosary group, there has been both a spiritual and political battle for the future of the church since its doors closed in 2019.

For its part, the rosary group says it has prayed regularly outside the church building, even in Chicago’s frigid winters.

At the same time, local Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez made efforts to change the church building’s zoning, a move that would require any property developer to engage with neighborhood and parish representatives before development plans for the building could be approved.

Amid those efforts, according to local media, the property has twice gone under contract, but both deals have fallen through.

The cover of a real estate brochure listing the St. Adalbert Church property.

While the property would seem to belong canonically to St. Paul’s Parish, real estate title to churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago is held in a corporation sole structure by the archdiocese itself.

Alderman Sigcho-Lopez’s efforts have met significant resistance. In May his plan gained the support of the city council’s zoning committee, despite promises from archdiocesan counsel that they would sue to block the rezoning.

But according to Block Club Chicago, political allies of Mayor Lori Lightfoot blocked the rezoning vote.

Last week, the St. Adalbert’s Rosary Group filed suit against the mayor, charging that the mayor gave favoritism to the both developers and the Archdiocese of Chicago over the needs of the community, violating religious liberty and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).

The case is now pending in federal court.

The St. Adalbert’s Pieta statue on a flatbed truck Nov. 29, outside St. Adalbert’s Church in Chicago. Courtesy photo.

The Pietà statue itself was initially scheduled to be removed from the church in September, but a protest threatened that plan. Another planned move was halted in October by the presence of protests.

A January letter of intent obtained by The Pillar indicates that a $3.95 million offer on the property was made by ANEW LLC, which the rosary group claims is a real estate holding company director by Dan Davidson, a real estate developer who in 2003 converted a closed Miami synagogue into The Temple House, an event venue which is also a single-family residence.

The letter of intent indicates that ANEW, LLC would intend to use the St. Adalbert’s property for “assembly use, including but not limited to: weddings, life celebrations, private events, dinner gatherings, educational seminars, religious ceremonies, charities, galas and other functions in accordance with traditional socially acceptable standards.”

The rosary group said that sale would be a “surrender” of Catholic patrimony.

“When the Church is surrendering some of the greatest of its historical and architectural treasures to the secular world, in this case for what we know to be sordid use, with familiar secrecy and callousness, serious questions need to be asked by the pope and others at the Vatican. We need to address why we’re giving up on these treasures of the faith in response to declines in Mass attendance when so many Catholics are leaving the Church for other denominations,” its Nov. 29 statement said.

“The leaders of our Church are giving up on these churches in a way that is leading to their unnecessary destruction,” the group added.

It is not clear whether that possible sale to ANEW is still in the works; Davidson himself could not be reached for comment.

Since 2018, the Archdiocese of Chicago has been in the process of its “Renew My Church” initiative, which will see the number of archdiocesan parishes reduced from 344 to 221, and see at least 57 parish churches shuttered across the archdiocese. The archdiocese has roughly half the number of priests it did in 1975, and Mass attendance has declined sharply in recent decades.

Canon law provides that “if a church cannot be used in any way for divine worship and there is no possibility of repairing it, the diocesan bishop can relegate it to profane but not sordid use.”

The law specifies that “where other grave causes suggest that a church no longer be used for divine worship, the diocesan bishop, after having heard the presbyteral council, can relegate it to profane but not sordid use, with the consent of those who legitimately claim rights for themselves in the church and provided that the good of souls suffers no detriment thereby.”

Amid of a spate of church closures in the United States in recent decades, parishioners making appeals to the Vatican have seen success if officials determine that the proper consultative process for a church closure was not followed, or if the church itself is determined to be sufficiently suitable for continued sacramental worship.

The archdiocese has not yet responded to questions from The Pillar.

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