St. Barbara Catholic Church () is a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of the

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Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

, within the

Diocese of Cleveland The Diocese of Cleveland () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northeastern Ohio in the United States. , the bishop is Edward Malesic. The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, located in Clevelan ...

. 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 Brooklyn Centre is a neighborhood on the West Side of Cleveland, Ohio. It borders Old Brooklyn to the south, Stockyards, Clark–Fulton, and Tremont to the north, and the Cuyahoga Valley and the suburb of Cuyahoga Heights to the east. H ...

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 location information about more than two million physical and cultural features, encompassing the United States and its territories; the associated states of the Marshal ...

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. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland in Ohio from 2006 to 2016. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdio ...

was appointed Bishop of Cleveland by

Pope Benedict XVI Pope BenedictXVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger; 16 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as p ...

. 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 regard ...

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

inner city The term inner city (also called the hood) 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. Soc ...

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 and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

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