St. Barbara Catholic Church ( pl, Parafia św. Barbary w Cleveland) is a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

of the

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Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, within the

Diocese of Cleveland The Diocese of Cleveland ( la, Dioecesis Clevelandensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Ohio. Pope Pius IX erected the diocese April 23, 1847, in te ...

. The parish church is located on Denison Ave. between West 16th St. and the southbound entrance to SR 176, in a part of the Brooklyn Centre neighborhood previously known in Polish as . The red brick parish church, designed by H.C. Gabele, is a local landmark. It is a

GNIS The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

named feature. The church, rectory and convent buildings are listed together as a Cleveland Designated Landmark. The parish was established in 1905.

History

Closure controversy

On 4 April 2006,

titular Bishop A titular bishop in various churches is a bishop who is not in charge of a diocese. By definition, a bishop is an "overseer" of a community of the faithful, so when a priest is ordained a bishop, the tradition of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox an ...

Richard Lennon Richard Gerard Lennon (March 26, 1947 – October 29, 2019) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, Diocese of Cleveland in Ohio from 2006 to 2016. ...

was appointed Bishop of Cleveland by

Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...

. In 2009, Bishop Lennon undertook a massive downsizing, ordering the closing of 50 parishes throughout the diocese, citing demographic shifts, the ongoing

priest shortage In the years since World War II there has been a substantial reduction in the number of priests ''per capita'' in the Catholic Church, a phenomenon considered by many to constitute a "shortage" in the number of priests. From 1980 to 2012, the ratio ...

, and maintenance costs. This led to outcry, however, not only from parishioners but from civil authorities. The suppression of 13 of the closed parishes, among them St. Barbara's, was reversed in a ruling by the

Congregation for the Clergy The Dicastery for the Clergy, formerly named Congregation for the Clergy (; formerly the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy and Sacred Congregation of the Council), is the dicastery of the Roman Curia responsible for overseeing matters regardin ...

announced 7 March 2012. The Associated Press reported on the importance of this church to the

inner city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...

neighborhood. On 12 March 2012, the Diocesan Department of Communications announced that, "The Diocese has not formally received from the Vatican any decrees from the Congregation of Clergy concerning parish appeals; subsequently, no response is available at this time." On 14 March 2012, Lennon, through a press release from the Diocesan Department of Communications announced that, "As indicated in my previous statement, I promised to inform you when I had received from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy decrees associated with parish appeals. The decrees arrived on Wednesday, March 14, 2012. The process to review these rulings will now be undertaken with my advisors." He further announced, on 27 March 2012, that, "With the help of a number of advisors – including members of the clergy, laity and experts in church law – I am carefully studying and seeking to fully understand the decrees. I can assure you that this is not nearly as clear-cut as it may appear on the surface. Although the decrees are brief in length, they are deep in underlying meaning and I continue to receive significant input and clarification." St. Barbara was among eleven parishes re-established in 2012. On 27 June 2012, Lennon announced the appointment of Father Joseph Hilinski as Pastor. The first

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

since the reopening of the church was celebrated Sunday, 22 July 2012.

Priests

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Barbara Church, Cleveland, Ohio Polish-American culture in Cleveland Christian organizations established in 1905 Roman Catholic churches completed in 1951 Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland Roman Catholic churches in Cleveland 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States 1905 establishments in Ohio