St. Benedict parishioner pushes back against Buffalo Diocese closure recommendation

EGGERTSVILLE, N.Y. (WIVB) — This month, the Buffalo Diocese rolled out its recommendations to merge or close more than 70 worship sites as it seeks to rightsize and reshape itself.

All parish families across western New York have now had the list of recommended closures or mergers for the last two weeks.

The diocese confirmed with News 4 Sunday that no family has yet to request a meeting to change those recommendations. Still, parishioners are pushing back against the diocese.

“We deserve a little bit more from a transparency perspective,” Nandor Forgach, a parishioner of St. Benedict, said.

Parishioners at over 70 worship sites in western New York, including churches like St. Benedict’s in Eggertsville, are trying to make sense of why they have been recommended to close.

Forgach said the church is vibrant, pays their bills, and has a miles-long waiting list to get into the attached school.

“We’re seeing more and more parents and families starting to come into the school,” he said. “We’ve seen our sacrament numbers go up because we have the school attached to the parish.”

With all those factors, he’s wondering why the diocese is shuttering St. Benedicts.

“A school that is strong does not necessarily mean that it’s an indicator of a strong parish. Those are two different things,” said Father Bryan Zielenieski, Vicar for Renewal and Development, who leads the diocese’s “Road to Renewal” effort.

St. Benedict’s school will remain open and expand into the church campus, but masses will be moved to St. Leo the Great on Sweet Home Road.

The diocese cites geography to other less aging facilities and lack of mass attendance for this recommendation. Data obtained by News 4 shows since 2014, mass turnout has dropped by an average of over 420 parishioners.

“As of 2023, they reported 331 people attend mass on the weekend there for three masses. That’s 110 people per mass at a church that seats 900,” Zielenieski said.

“It’s a two-way road,” Forgach said. “It’s not just on the parishes to improve their evangelization, but it’s also on the church as a whole to start looking at itself and really implement changes that would help bring people back into the Catholic faith and community.”

Parishioners said greater transparency from the Diocese is needed concerning the rationale behind the proposed closures.

“This was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Forgach said. “We feel like we’re being taken granted of.”

Church leaders assert that this is a reciprocal process, emphasizing that all the data utilized was supplied by the affected parishes, meaning everyone has access to the numbers.

“The diocese has a statistical report that they send out to every parish that asks for sacrament numbers and then their financial report every year,” Zielenieski said. “On the back they actually sign off that they’ve made the numbers accurate to what’s happening in their parish community.”

Parish families and the churches that could potentially be closed or merged have until July 15 to make a counterproposal, with the number of recommended closures needing to remain the same. The final list of closures is set to be finalized by Sept. 1, with mergers beginning in October.

“There are people here that are willing to do whatever it takes to keep this church and this community going, vibrant and alive,” Forgach said. “It would be a shame to lose that, especially when you’re trying to rebuild Catholicism.”

To view News 4’s full coverage of the Buffalo Diocese restructuring, click here.

Dillon Morello is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has been part of the News 4 team since September of 2023. See more of his work here and follow him on Twitter.