ST. LOUIS — The Vatican has agreed to review the appeals made by parishioners of two local parishes that were closed under the St. Louis Archdiocese's "All Things New" restructuring plan and rejected the appeals of two others.
The Archdiocese said in a statement Monday that the Dicastery for the Clergy accepted petitions for recourse against decrees related to St. Elizabeth Mother of John the Baptist Parish in St. Louis and Sts. Philip and James Parish in River aux Vases.
The All Things New plan consolidates 178 parishes into 134. After it went into effect in August, Sts. Philip and James was subsumed into Ste. Genevieve Parish, and St. Elizabeth Mother of John the Baptist merged with other parishes into a yet-unnamed parish, according to the Archdiocese.
The Dicastery for the Clergy also rejected petitions for recourse against the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in Ferguson and St. Matthew the Apostle in St. Louis, and rejected three petitions against new priest assignments.
Parishioners at several parishes have appealed the closures to the Vatican. The Archdiocese has suspended mergers for some of those parishes while the Dicastery for the Clergy makes a decision, which the Archdiocese said would likely take months.
"This is an anticipated part of the 'All Things New' pastoral planning process,” St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski said in a statement regarding the Vatican's agreement to review two decrees. “Over the next several months, we expect to receive additional Dicastery communications regarding other petitions that were submitted.”
