By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Apr 10, 2025 /
14:30 pm
More than a dozen parishes in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, have received a temporary reprieve from the Vatican regarding planned mergers as the churches petition the Holy See to halt parts of the diocese’s renewal plan.
Bishop Michael Fisher announced in May 2024 that the diocese would be merging over a third of its 160 parishes, calling the move an effort to “reinvigorate the Catholic faith in western New York.” In September the diocese said it would see a total of 118 worship sites remain open, down from 196.
Multiple parishes in the diocese appealed the decision to the Vatican, asking the Dicastery for the Clergy to review Fisher’s proposal. Local media reported this week that 14 parishes received letters from the dicastery confirming that their respective mergers would be suspended while the Vatican reviews the plans.
The request for the suspension “is hereby granted, for the duration of the recourse,” dicastery prefect Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik wrote in the letters.
The dicastery “has placed itself in correspondence with Bishop Fisher and will communicate with you again when his response has been studied,” the parishes were told.
The letters were dated to last month. They were also signed by Archbishop Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira, the secretary for the dicastery.
The Buffalo Diocese’s mergers come amid efforts by other U.S. dioceses to shore up Church finances and operations in response to declining attendance and funding shortages.
The Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, said last year it would halve the number of parishes there by 2026 as part of a pastoral planning effort focused on helping the diocese “be more intentional in cultivating disciples.”
Around the same time, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced that it would merge 61 parishes in the episcopate’s titular city into 21 parishes.
The Archdiocese of Seattle last February, meanwhile, said it would combine 170 parishes into 60 “parish families” as part of its major diocesan renewal plan.
Parishes and local Catholics have regularly mounted challenges to diocesan merger plans, sometimes successfully.
Last June the clergy dicastery rejected an appeal and upheld a decision by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis to close a parish as part of the archdiocesan renewal plan, but earlier in the year the dicastery upheld two other appeals from parishes in the archdiocese.
In Buffalo, meanwhile, Ellen and Tim Zelasko — parishioners of Infant of Prague in Cheektowaga, New York — told local news station WKBW that the order from the dicastery was “a bit of a reprieve,” though Ellen Zelasko noted that it was “just for now.”
Still, Tim Zelasko told the network: “We’re very, very happy right now.”
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
