Bishop Edgar da Cunha will celebrate the final Mass at St. Bernadette on Aug. 5, said the Rev. James Fitzpatrick, the parochial vicar at St. Bernadette who announced the pending closure at Masses over the weekend.

Brian Fraga Herald News Staff Reporter @BfragaHN

FALL RIVER — St. Bernadette Church, the struggling Flint parish created in 2012 from the merger of Notre Dame and Immaculate Conception churches, will close this summer after years of declining Mass attendance.

Bishop Edgar da Cunha will celebrate the final Mass at St. Bernadette on Aug. 5, said the Rev. James Fitzpatrick, the parochial vicar at St. Bernadette who announced the pending closure at Masses over the weekend.

"There was a lot of sadness, a lot of tears, but I think everybody knew this was coming," Fitzpatrick said, adding that a parish committee recommended the closing after examining the various challenges facing St. Bernadette.

The announcement comes in the midst of a major reorganization effort underway in the Diocese of Fall River. Da Cunha said last month that the “strategic planning process” would probably result in some parish closings and mergers.

The possibility of St. Bernadette’s closing came to light during a parish “listening session,” facilitated by diocesan officials, in mid-March, where parishioners examined the challenges they were up against.

St. Bernadette has almost $3 million in debt, needed capital improvements that could have cost up to $1.5 million, operating expenses that increase every year and lagging Mass attendance. In 2017, operating expenses increased by 21 percent from the year before while the parish's annual fell by ten percent.

Last year, St. Bernadette Church had 44 funerals and 13 baptisms. The church is built for 700 people, but only 476 worshipers combined attend the four weekend Masses. Nobody has gotten married in the parish in two years.

Fitzpatrick said the parish committee decided those obstacles were "insurmountable," and recommended the closing to da Cunha.

"It's just very sad. There are a lot of memories, a lot of remembering," Fitzpatrick said.

Another struggling, historically-French parish in Fall River could be on the verge of closing. St. Anne’s Church, the iconic parish building on South Main Street, has been dealing with similar issues as St. Bernadette. Parishioners at St. Anne’s need to raise $13.5 million to renovate and reopen the upper church, which has been closed since plaster fell off the walls during a Sunday Mass in May 2015.

 

Meanwhile, all the sacramental records of more than a century’s worth of baptisms, first communions, confirmations, weddings and funerals from Notre Dame and Immaculate Conception churches will be sent to a “forwarding” parish, which Fitzpatrick said has not yet been decided.

Fitzpatrick will be moving to a new assignment next month as the administrator at St. Louis de France Church in Swansea. Fitzpatrick said he invited St. Bernadette parishioners to join him there or at any parish where they comfortable.

“Our faith lives lives are so important. Everybody should be finding a parish,” Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t want to see anyone left outside with no place to go.”

This story will be updated.

Email Brian Fraga at bfraga@heraldnews.com