An email will go out today to those who signed our petition. It will have my previous post preceded by what is written below. From: Tom Soltes To: All of your people Subject: Final Update [[first name]], I believe that this effort has reached a point that it is in the hands of others at the right level and with the right authority to bring this to a conclusion, whatever that may end up being. With that, this is the last update that I will be publishing through this communication vehicle. I will update information on the Save St. Marys facebook page as I hear it but I suspect that it will be on a sporadic basis. There are two entities that this is now with. One is obviously the Church under canon law and the other is jointly with the FBI and the Inspector General Office of HUD. Below are my final thoughts on those and where everything now stands. According to Father Schreck who is the pastor of St. Monica the new Parish now in Chippewa township in Beaver Falls. St. Mary’s church was ready to be demolished in March when Unis put up a fence enclosure and had all of their heavy equip there on site. I had sent a letter to the Vatican and do know that Fr. Schreck was summoned there and was there for two weeks. That happened just before Easter. He had said before leaving that he was going to Rome to pickup “Relics”. When he returned he has never talked about those relics or his trip at all. Upon his return the heavy equip was removed from the St. Mary’s location. They also have a school right next door to the church that is still open and functioning as a school. I had felt that the church would wait until school was out because of the safety concerns for doing the demolition while school was in session. I had also written to the city and told them that they had an obligation to ensure the safety of the children and that should be sufficient justification to deny a demolition permit if requested. They never responded to the letter. The summer school break has come and gone and nothing has happened. Based what I have learned I suspect that the city and church had a plan. That was for the church to demolish a 140 year old church and sell the property where they would build additional Section 8 housing. The BFPL did buy the property across the street from the church this past November. Contrary to what all were told, the deed of transfer was signed off by the Diocese stating that the property became their possession as the result of a Suppression of the church which occurred in July. This is an important distinction because if, as the church stated it was a merger, all of the liabilities and all of the assets that were under the ownership of the St. Mary’s parish are transferred to the new parish St. Monica. Fr. Schreck sent me a letter on January 21, 2014 that stated that the Divine Mercy parish was $240,000.00 in debt. His letter went on to say and I quote “Selflessly the other three parishes accepted the people of Divine Mercy Parish knowing full well that they had a sizeable debt and a building that needed to be razed.” Had a merger occurred that debt would have been offset by the sale of the parish property and not sold with the proceeds going into the Diocese coffers through suppression, as was stated in the deed transfer document? I believe that is what was planned. It seems to make sense to me that the Diocese unloads the property and makes money off the sale and the city/county benefits from additional tax for real estate which currently is tax free as property of the Catholic Church. Then there are also the individuals who would profit as the owners, most likely BPFL, who with HUD funding would build additional section 8 housing. Those owners are unknown and not traceable by me through available documents. Also uncovered was that there are a significant number of real estate transactions in Beaver Falls that are between non-profit organizations. There are also many from the city or county to nonprofits with most of those being done for a total price of $1.00. In at least one case, the nonprofit sold a property to a private citizen for $25,000. At the time it was sold the nonprofit did not own that property. They bought the property from the county 4 days later for $1.00. The net profit $24,999, is nowhere to be found on their annual IRS filing. Many of the non-profits in Beaver Falls are funded by HUD or operate under HUD funds or other government grants, aid or assistance. Some are highly suspect on the use of those funds. A review of IRS records indicated that a vast majority of the funding money was used to pay salaries, compensation and benefits. The question would be how much of that expense directly benefited the community and how much was administrative overhead. In January of this year the Vatican issued a ruling on Canon Law and made it clear that repairs of up to $12 million are not a good enough reason for a church building to be demolished or converted into something other than a Catholic church. The Diocese in Buffalo NY was ordered to reopen St. Ann’s church after the diocese had closed it 7 years earlier. In 2010 the Supreme Tribunal Apostolic Signatura, the highest court within the Catholic Church, overruled bishops, ruling that the closing of churches in Springfield, Allentown and Buffalo was unnecessary and thus not permitted under canon law. This may be just wishful thinking on my part but I found it interesting that the Pittsburgh Diocese falls under the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Pope Francis has announced that he is making his first visit to the US and that will be to Philadelphia. Who knows!
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:22:26 +0000