Join super parish? No thanks, says Tacoma church, which is taking its case to Vatican

On Friday, four Tacoma Catholic parishes will merge into one new parish. The decision comes after years of declining membership, a lack of priests and dwindling finances, according to the Seattle Archdiocese.

Some congregants in at least one of those parishes, St. Rita of Cascia on Tacoma’s Hilltop, are fiercely opposed to being swept into a so-called super parish and losing what they consider their spiritual home.

The merger’s goal, as outlined by the archdiocese which oversees Catholic churches in Western Washington, is to combine the waning Catholic enclaves into one, vibrant parish.

St. Rita’s congregation said it has and will weather the challenges facing the Catholic church. The forced merger process has excluded them, they said, despite assurances to the contrary from the archdiocese.

“We’re heartsick,” said parishioner Gina Costanti-Eacrett. “That’s our home. And we’ve been told to leave our home.”

She called the archdiocese-directed merger process deceitful and dishonest.

Some congregants are sympathetic toward the archdiocese and the pressures facing Archbishop Paul Etienne.

“It will be hard to replace St. Rita’s,” said parishioner Susan Garasi-McCreary who grew up in the church. “But we’re trying.”

Others are not as conciliatory.

“I never came across such an unorganized, unsympathetic, non-compassionate organization in my life,” longtime parishioner and former Fircrest Mayor David Viafore said.

Viafore and Constanti-Eacrett are emblematic of the families that make up St. Rita’s congregation. Many can trace their roots back to the founding members of the church built by early 20th century Italian immigrants.

Six generations of Viafore’s family have attended mass at the church. Costanti-Eacrett’s Italian immigrant grandfather and great-grandfather helped build the church in 1922.

“It’s not just a staple on the Hilltop,” Viafore said. “It’s a staple in the Italian community.”

After its final mass June 8, the church was closed and its keys, once in Viafore’s care, are now with the archdiocese.

The archdiocese said Etienne worked with priests and a strategic planning committee to determine which parishes would merge. By canon law, only parishes with shared boundaries can be merged.

Saint of the impossible

If it wasn’t for the cross rising from its modest belfry, St. Rita might be mistaken for one of the surrounding homes in its quiet neighborhood at the corner of South 14th Street and Ainsworth Avenue.

A closer look reveals arched stained-glass windows punctuating its length. A mural of an Italian village is painted over the main entrance.

A visitor stepping inside the church will find a gallery of statues surrounding rows of wooden pews. One statue portrays a nun wearing her habit — St. Rita herself. The 14th century sister was from Cascia, Italy — not far from where many of those who built the church grew up.

In the Catholic religion, St. Rita is the patroness of impossible causes and difficult marriages.

“Every Saturday, we come to the steps and we pray to St. Rita, the saint of the impossible, that we would be able to somehow stay a community in spite of everything,” said parishioner Marla Grassi.

Hurt, bewildered parishioners appealed to Etienne in an effort to keep their church active. They say it is already vibrant and financially sound.

“Archbishop Etienne has denied the request to reconsider his decree,” archdiocese spokesperson Helen McClenahan said Tuesday.

On May 31, St. Rita’s leaders appealed to the Vatican itself. A decision on St. Rita’s fate could take six months, they say.

The congregation knows the parish, and the Catholic church itself, is under pressure, but they want St. Rita to stay a vital part of the Catholic community either as a church, a chapel, a mission or a shrine.

“We know it has to change,” Grassi said. “We’re open to change, but we just don’t want that to include keeping the doors closed.”

Grassi serves on St. Rita’s stakeholder team, a group formed by the archdiocese to determine the future of the parish.

Super Parish

Along with St. Rita, the new parish incorporates St. Ann, Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the former Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. The parish will include the mission of St. John of the Woods and be based on the 4-acre St. Ann campus at 7025 S. Park Ave. in South Tacoma.

Father Tuan Nguyen, the current pastor of St. Ann, will be pastor for the new St. John XXIII parish.

In May, the archdiocese said leadership at all the parishes supported the merger.

Not so, responded members of the St. Rita congregation in emails and phone calls to The News Tribune.

“Parish leadership is not supporting the merger,” Grassi said. It never did, she said. The archdiocese ignored their concerns about the merger.

“The parishioners are not happy, they are not pleased, they did not want this to happen,” she said.

Priests at other parishes who initially expressed support for celebrating mass at St. Rita eventually went silent, she said.

Grassi understands that priests are in short supply. But, she contends, if the goal of the merger is to create vibrant parishes then the archdiocese already has one: St. Rita.

A century on the Hilltop

St. Rita was built to ease Italian immigrants into American life.

“It was a very impoverished church to start with,” parishioner Fran Jordan said. “The Italians wanted to have a place of worship where they could worship in their own language.

“Mr. Turco plumbed the church, Mr. Bertucci built the pews,” Jordan said. “Another Mr. Bertucci sold his cow and bought the bell.”

That bell was last rung on June 8, the final mass held — for now — at the church.

St. Rita’s first mass was held April 9, 1922 in a house where the church now stands.

Nearly 200 people gave money for the new church building in 1922, mostly in $5 and $10 donations, according to church records. The immigrants worked in sawmills and shipyards and as grocers and shoemakers. The new church opened its doors in 1924.

The church didn’t have a physical parish until the 1970s. Until then, it was considered a national church, open to anyone in the Italian community.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnamese immigrant parishioners began filling the pews. Today, the bulk of Tacoma’s Vietnamese Catholic parishioners attend mass at St. Ann.

A bittersweet 100th anniversary celebration, complete with an Italian dinner, was held May 22, St. Rita’s feast day.

It’s St. Rita’s Italian roots that bind the church with its congregation, its members say. They fear they will be buried amid the larger congregation of the new parish. The archdiocese’s advice: join a committee.

“Parishioners are encouraged to participate with sub-committees in the new parish as a way to foster events celebrating all of the cultural heritages represented in the new parish,” the archdiocese said.

Challenges

The Catholic church is up front about the two big problems it faces: a declining population of people who identify as Catholic and a shortage of priests.

In 1995, just under 500 people attended mass at St. Rita, according to the archdiocese. By 2019, that number had dwindled to about 156. Baptisms, marriages and other Catholic rites of passage all dropped over the last two decades.

According to the archdiocese, 13 priests serve all of Tacoma’s parishes and preside at nine weekly masses. The archdiocese predicts that only 67 priests will be serving 168 parishes and missions within 15 years.

There is one other problem facing a church besieged by billion-dollar clergy abuse cases. While St. Rita parishioners say their church is financially sound, others are not as healthy.

A few blocks away, Holy Rosary parish merged with St. Ann in 2021 after it didn’t have the millions of dollars needed to fix its doomed church and iconic bell tower.

St. Rita’s annual income, which peaked at $180,000 around 2016, had dropped to about $130,000 by 2020, according to the archdiocese.

Still, before the archdiocese took control of St. Rita’s bank account in 2020, the parish had $328,000. Among the super parish entities, only St. Ann, with its Visitation STEM Academy, had more: $732,000.

Timeline

Etienne first announced the merger in November 2020.

“As we all know, the current status quo is not an option,” he wrote.

In January 2021, the archdiocese sent an information packet to the St. Rita congregation outlining the process.

“How this happens will be determined with your input,” the archdiocese said.

“It was kind of a step-by-step process, but it’s a step-by-step process that was already decided,” Viafore said.

The archdiocese held an online meeting with congregants in fall 2020.

“We have elderly parishioners that do not have access, or let alone know how to use a computer at that time,” Viafore said. “And so they were excluding certain members of our community. And they went full speed ahead.”

The archdiocese said COVID-19 precautions prevented in-person meetings.

Etienne held a meeting St. Ann Jan. 13 with key leaders and stakeholders involved with the merger, McClenahan said. She provided a transcript from the meeting.

“This is not about closing parishes,” Etienne said at the meeting. “It’s about creating vibrant parishes.”

Etienne said his role in the merger process is akin to being a shepherd.

“My friends, I hear the pain, I hear the griping and I hear the complaining,” he said. “But God has a better future in store for us. I am determined to lead us there.”

Masses and missions

In 2018, Sunday mass at St. Rita was moved to 7:30 a.m., making it difficult for the elderly and families with children to attend.

“The old timers didn’t get up,” Viafore said. “And the people that lived in Lakewood, or University Place … too far for them to travel with their kids.”

That last regular Sunday mass ended in summer 2021.

The archdiocese ended the ministries St. Rita parishioners run, including a food bank and clothing drive. Also gone: A free monthly Italian dinner the church’s men’s group cooked at Nativity House for over 30 years.

Viafore said neither Etienne nor his assistant bishops have ever visited St. Rita.

“They have just set us aside like an unwanted child,” Viafore said. “That is not the religion that I was raised by. The compassion of the Catholic Church has gone by the wayside.”

Last mass

About 60 parishioners gathered for St. Rita’s final mass. It was also a celebration of his 50th jubilee for longtime priest, Father Ron Knudsen.

As parishioners entered, they dipped their fingers in holy water before making the sign of the cross and finding a pew.

Knudsen offered communion from the altar where “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” is emblazoned above. Statues of Jesus and saints gazed upon the congregation. A woman in a rear pew knitted during the mass.

In the church’s basement an Italian lunch was being prepared for Knudsen and the congregation.

The congregations’ family roots run deep and spread far.

“His uncle is my grandfather,” a woman said pointing at a nearby man as she explained family ties.

Jordan’s grandparents were peasants from southern Italy, she said.

“After they lost their fifth child under the age of two, they decided to call it quits and move to the United States,” she said.

Jordan’s grandfather, Gaspare Acquino, came first. His journey was sponsored by a mining company in what he thought was Washington D.C. After he disembarked at Ellis Island, he boarded a train.

“And the second day on the train, he realized there was a mistake, and he ended up in Washington state,” Jordan said

St. Rita still has some first-generation immigrant congregants.

Rosa Laudadio, 80, grew up in the Adriatic seaside city of Mola di Bari in Italy’s Puglia region.

She came to Tacoma in 1968 with her husband.

“I came Friday night in Tacoma,” Laudavio said in a strong Italian accent. “The next Sunday I came to Santa Rita. Since then, I don’t go to any other church”

Both her sons were baptized at St. Rita. There were communions and confirmations.

“It break my heart to close this church,” she said.

Sacred space

A mega parish doesn’t appeal to most of the parishioners of St. Rita.

“Some people feel safer in a large church,” Jordan said. “They like the anonymity, but a lot of people feel safer in a small church, and they like a more intimate feel.”

The building is on the city’s listing of sacred spaces.

The Catholic Church doesn’t allow itself to sell a church as if it were an abandoned strip mall. It can deconsecrate a church — something that couldn’t happen to St. Rita until the appeal process is completed, McClenahan said.

Father Nguyen will decide the temporary fate of St. Rita while the appeal is pending.

“I am working with my parish leadership to find next steps for each building,” Nguyen said in an emailed statement to The News Tribune.

The parishioners support their local clergy, they said, but some said they won’t attend mass at the new parish. They’ll find other churches closer to where they live.

Some swear they will finish their lives where theirs and their ancestors began.

“My husband, who’s not so elderly, he’s adamant that when he passes that he has his funeral (at St. Rita),” Grassi said. “He was baptized, had first communion, was confirmed, and was married all at St. Rita’s. It’s been his church and community for his entire life.”

“Some people think we just need to move on and just let it go,” Viafore said. “I kind of disagree a little bit. It’s a hard position the Archbishop put us in.”