HAVERHILL — It turned the city's Catholic community upside down.
Ten years ago, the Archdiocese of Boston closed three neighborhood churches in Haverhill and merged their congregations into a fourth building, the former St. Joseph Church.
All Saints Parish was born, but not without pain. Gone were the beloved St. Rita, St. Michael and St. George churches — homes to small congregations where everyone knew each other. Those congregations had to blend into a larger building and community of strangers. And gone was the identity of St. Joseph Church, which became All Saints.
There were hurt feelings all around. Some families had to give up churches where their children had been baptized and their elders were laid to rest. The St. Joseph congregation had to give up its identity and make room in its religious lives for hundreds of new people.
Some of the hurt persisted through the past decade, but they were productive growing pains. Today that new parish is strong, its members say — an example of success when the Archdiocese has to make the difficult choice of closing churches because of a lack of priests, money and even parishioners.
All Saints celebrates its 10th anniversary tomorrow with a special 4 p.m. Mass, followed by a dinner. In a reunion of sorts, the parish will welcome back former priests from the old churches and some who served at All Saints during the last decade.
All 300 tickets to the dinner have been sold, and church members are ready to reflect on how they built a new parish during the last 10 years.
"The community spirit is better," said the Rev. Dennis Nason, pastor of All Saints who took over when the merger happened.
An early struggle
Nason recalled how several members of the closed parishes refused to attend Mass at the new place of worship. Some of them instead went to Sacred Hearts Church in Bradford, where the Rev. James Broderick, pastor of St. George, was reassigned. Others who had attended St. Michael Church, which had Polish roots, began attending Mass at Holy Trinity in Lawrence, also founded by Polish immigrants.
A few parishioners at St. Rita went to St. Mary Church in Georgetown, where their former pastor, the Rev. James Carroll, serves.
Nason and the Rev. Mark Ballard, parochial vicar at All Saints, both said many of the former parishioners of the closed parishes, however, have given All Saints a chance.
"Our goal is to reach out to inactive Catholics," Nason said. "We want to help them realize they're needed."
Both Nason and Ballard, as well as Carol Simone, principal of St. Joseph School at All Saints Parish, said they and others work to promote a "welcoming, family atmosphere."
Like the other parish closings throughout the Archdiocese of Boston and the United States, the merger of the four churches in Haverhill was caused in large part by the plummeting number of priests.
On the vocation front, Nason and Ballard see hope. One of their parishioners, the Rev. Richard Burton, 49, a former Navy officer, was ordained in 2004. Burton, who was a "delayed vocation," is now hard at work as the pastor of St. Thomas and Our Lady of Fatima parishes in Peabody.
Another parishioner, Eric Peabody, has just begun studying to become a deacon.
The parish has a very active food pantry and more adults are getting serious about studying the Bible, Ballard said.
While the old St. Joseph Church was discontinued in identity, the parish school, founded more than 100 years ago, is still going strong. St. Joseph School serves 352 children in nursery through eighth grade. There are two classes for each grade.
"We have a family atmosphere. We help the children in their faith as well as academics," Simone said. Many All Saints parishioners send their children to the school.
Tomorrow's Mass will be concelebrated by the Most Rev. Emilio Allue, bishop of the Merrimack Valley Region of the Archdiocese, along with Nason, Ballard and the Revs. Arnold Kelley, a retired priest who resides at All Saints; Joseph Svirskas, former pastor of St. George; Robert Reed, a former parochial vicar at All Saints who now serves with the archdiocese's TV ministry; and Mark Derrane, another former parochial vicar at All Saints.
Mending after the merger
Arthur and Marge Fargnoli were parishioners at St. George Church for 28 years. Originally from Lawrence, they bought a home on Bates Road and at the suggestion of a neighbor, began attending St. George.
"That's where I was happy," said Marge Fargnoli. "It was small and everybody worked together." She had very kind words about the pastor, Broderick.
"Father Jim was your father, you confessor, your stabilizer. ... He loved children," she said. Whatever struggle a parishioner had "he'd help you through it," she said.
Today, however, she feels at home at All Saints.
"It's all what you make of it. I think Father Dennis brought us through," she said of Nason.
Fargnoli and her husband are the parents of three adult daughters. She serves on the Parish Council and they both work on the various parish dinners. They'll be hard at work Saturday night.
Barbara Worcester and her husband, Mark, also attended St. George for many years. They had three small children when they started there and Broderick made them feel very much at home.
"He knew all the kids by name," she said. She and her husband were brought up in a large church where the atmosphere was impersonal and the attitude was, "children should be seen and not heard."
At St. George, she said, it was the opposite. It was a close-knit parish family and children were made to feel at ease.
Barbara Worcester said she was "heartbroken" when St. George closed.
"At first it was a struggle," she said of their first few Masses at All Saints. Now, however, "it's home," she said.
Appropriately, tomorrow's 4 p.m. Mass is being celebrated on the Feast of All Saints.
