Archdiocese officials tells city Church closings will be few

The Archdiocese of Boston will only close a small number of Catholic schools in the city, Church spokesman Rev. Christopher Coyne assured members of the Boston City Council during a hearing at city hall Thursday afternoon.

“What they are and how many I do not know,” he said, adding that an announcement will come in May.

The joint hearing of the council’s Committee on Education and the Committee on Planning Economic Development was called to address the archdiocese’s “reconfiguration” of its 206 buildings and properties in Boston – a process that could result in closed parishes and schools. Coyne could not give an exact number of how many will be affected.

While City Council President Michael Flaherty called the impending closings “disturbing,” he said he was more concerned with “the way it’s done.”

Flaherty criticized the archdiocese’s stringent timetable and said it would leave parents, students and teachers “scrambling around the last day of school” to find new schools to attend after the summer.

Councilor Maureen Feeney (East Boston, Dorchester) agreed with Flaherty and said that many affected will be left with few schools to choose from as summer approaches.

“By the time you get to June, pickings are scarce,” she said.

But Flaherty added that although the Church needs to make changes, the council was not trying to make decisions for them.

“We’re not here to tell the Church what to do,” he said.

Councilor Jerry McDermott (Allston, Brighton) said communities need more notice before anything is closed.

“Could we not allow families a more dignified transition?” he asked Lennon.

But Coyne said there will be “plenty of time” between when school and parish closings are announced and when the Church decides how the closed properties will be used.

“At the end of the day, people can say, ‘We saw it coming,'” Coyne said.

Councilor John Tobin (Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill) said “the issue here is the timetable,” and that he was concerned that, as more and more schools close over the years, the opportunity to go to neighboring schools decreases.

It would be “absolutely devastating to the city of Boston” if children have no local public school to go to and must go elsewhere, he said.

But Coyne tried to assuage Tobin’s fears, saying that if there is nowhere else for children to go, a school will not be shut down.

“Unless there is an opportunity for students to transfer into neighboring Catholic schools,” the archdiocese will not close a school, he said.

But the issue of timing came to the table again as McDermott said he had a hard time comprehending “the rush” to close Church and school property “if money is not the case.”

Coyne dismissed any connection between parish closings and the archdiocese’s recent sale of 43 acres of land to Boston College as a means to finance settlements with victims of clergy sexual assault.

“This sale has nothing to do with the reconfiguration,” he said, citing a spring 1999 decision to close 60 parishes. “It’s not about the money. It’s a matter of demographics.” With the number of Catholics cut in half, “we don’t have the numbers to fill the churches,” he said.

Councilor James Kelly (Downtown, South End) said that he was most concerned with the lack of community input in the decision to close parishes.

“Give them the opportunity to save their parishes,” he said. “Every neighborhood in the city ought to have the opportunity to address first how they can save [their parishes].”