On a sharp November Sunday morning on Glasgow’s south side, the parishioners of St Albert’s in Pollokshields are being treated to an open-air cultural treat as they attend their 10am Mass. Hundreds of members of the neighbouring Sikh community, clad in Orange and wreathed in flowers and babes in arms are parading past the church.
“What’s the occasion,” an elderly church-goer asks her neighbour. “Who cares,” comes the response, “it’s all quite lovely.” Cross-cultural engagement like this one are not uncommon in Pollokshields where several faiths and ethnicities have been rubbing along gently together for many decades.
This neighbourhood is home to large numbers of Glasgow’s Muslim community, while St Albert’s is one of two Catholic churches in a part of the city where the Irish first began to settle more than 150 years ago. On a tour of these elegant old streets, you’ll also see several Protestant churches. Indeed, St Albert’s had previously belonged to the Free Church of Scotland. The interior of St Albert’s still bears the stamp of its stripped back, no-nonsense Protestant heritage. There are few serifs and curlicues, but enough to know that this space now belongs to Rome.
On the altar, a young African priest is delivering a rather wonderful sermon on being Christian in a secular world. He rounds it off with a song “Walk in the Light” and a wee shimmy. He invites the 100 souls in the congregation to join him and they duly accept, hesitantly at first and then with some fervour. Beneath and around this picture of serene and joyful devotion though, a tempest is raging in which the entire parish community has been in open revolt against the archdiocese of Glasgow and its head, Archbishop William Nolan.
The bitter stand-off concerns the archbishop’s plans to shut St Albert’s church and wipe the parish entirely from existence. The resistance has now reached Rome. It involves ownership of St Albert’s assets, including a six-figure sum in its accounts; questions about recent withdrawals made from these funds and the means by which the fate of their beloved church and parish have been communicated.
Across the Catholic community in Scotland there is keen interest in the St Albert’s resistance. Several other parishes are contemplating the same fate as St Albert’s. Bear in mind too that a multi-million-pound property portfolio is in play here.
Now, in an extraordinary development, the parishioners of St Albert’s have launched two appeals under Canon Law, asking the Vatican to step in and halt the archbishop’s moves to end more than 60 years of Catholic worship here. Thus far, they’ve achieved one significant victory, but failed in their primary objective. The Pope has ruled that the church must remain open for the time being but has given the go-ahead for the parish to be merged with St Helen’s, more than a mile further south. Parishioners are currently appealing that decision.
One long-standing parishioner who agreed to speak on the guarantee of anonymity said: “We could have lived with the closure of the church, as it wasn’t originally ours, but plans to erase the parish from the map were a major blow.”
Another parishioner said: “Look, everyone accepts that a shortage of priests and the cost of maintaining some old churches means that mergers and a process of down-sizing is inevitable, but the way in which this has been handled by the archdiocese has been appalling.”
In May, the Parish Council attempted to raise their issues at a tense meeting with Archbishop Nolan, which they recorded. In one extraordinary exchange there was a Marie Antoniette ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ moment. On being told that parishioners “may be disenfranchised or deprived of an opportunity for communal worship as a result of this proposed merger,” the archbishop said: “St. Helen’s is just about a mile away.”
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Following last Sunday’s Mass, an elderly parishioner told me: “We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. There are many elderly people in St Albert’s for whom the idea of travelling more than a mile to get to Mass on a Sunday morning is out of the question.”
Her friend said: “There’s a lot of pain about the fact that the name, St Albert’s will simply disappear. The proposed merger with St Helen’s is not a merger at all, it’s an extinctive union. We will cease to exist as a parish. Many of us would favour a proper merger with St Leo’s parish, which is closer and which would see the name St Albert’s retained, but the archbishop flat out rejected this.”
During another heated exchange with the archbishop, a parish council member said: “You say that you had a consultation, but your consultation was with the Council of Priests not with this parish community. We had previously had a poll within this parish as to what might be acceptable ways forward. The conclusion was that the majority were in favour of a merger of some sort with St. Leo’s.
“There will be no provision for St Albert’s church. That can be dressed up as something else but in effect it is the end of us as a parish community. I think it’s quite cynical. This whole process has been conducted under the guise of evangelisation. I think somebody owes the evangelists an apology.”
To put this in context: it’s not normal for churchgoing Catholics to question the authority of their bishops. This, though, proceeds on the basis of trust and mutual respect between church authorities and parishioners, all of whom dig deep to maintain the entire infrastructure of the Church. As one parishioner put it: “We love the church and recognise the sacred calling and leadership of priests and bishops, but we expect a measure of respect and for our voices to be heard, especially where it concerns our ability to attend worship. In this entire process we’ve been treated with disdain.”
Parishioners also have profound concerns about a sum of £116k which rested in the parish accounts before the merger was announced. All of their enquiries about this were ignored by St Helen’s, who then promptly informed them that their parish finance committee was being disbanded. Parishioners have subsequently been told that they’re not permitted to issue information via the parish newsletter or to hold any outreach meetings in the church hall. They were only able to gain sight of bank statements following a Freedom of Information request. They’ve been puzzled about the nature of some withdrawals on the account.
One parishioner said: “We’ve effectively been locked out of our own church. We didn’t even know originally until the parish priest of St Helen’s announced it via a live streaming of Mass on social media. This is unacceptable and deeply insulting.”
A spokesman for the Archdiocese said: “The parishes of St Helen’s and St Albert’s have been merged since September last year. Some parishioners appealed to Rome, but the Vatican’s Dicastery for Clergy approved the merger earlier this year.
“The declining number of priests and changing demographics of Catholics across the Archdiocese means that we need to look at how pastoral care can be provided over larger areas than before. The parish priest of St Helen's now has responsibility for the pastoral care of the whole area of the merged parish covering Shawlands, Pollokshields and surrounding areas.
“All assets of a parish belong to that parish in canon law (and belong to the trustees of the Archdiocese in civil law). Both these legal systems provide accountability, ensure transparency, and provide means of recourse in the event of problems being encountered.”
“In the event of a parish merger, the merging of funds happens automatically. The assets of both merging parishes become the assets of the newly merged parish, so there is no specific input required either from the Archdiocese or from parish finance committees.”
The parishioners of St Albert’s refuse to go away though, and have contested the archdiocese’s version of events. They reject the claim that their parish has already been merged.
A spokesperson for the Parish Council said: “We are currently in the process of our appeal to the Vatican’s Supreme Court against Archbishop Nolan’s decree which ordered the merging of our parish with St Helen’s, Langside. Our appeal proceeds on the basis that there was no meaningful consultation with us by the Archbishop on the merger and it is not in the interests of the parish community.
“We are also considering adding an argument that, since the decree was issued, there has been no “good faith” in the implementation of the merger but instead a steady attrition of the institutions of the parish, particularly the Parish Pastoral Council, the Parish Finance and our parish life generally, together with mismanagement of the parish’s assets.”
Vatican bureaucracy never proceeds above a glacial pace. Parishioners believe that the money they’ve collected to hire a lawyer expert in Canon Law has been worth the trouble. Last month, the parish celebrated its Diamond Jubilee with Holy Mass. They’re determined the name of St Albert’s will continue for another 60 years. One parishioner said: “At least we’ve managed to thwart the archdiocese’s attempts to force a quick closure and sell-off, but the way this has been handled is a disgrace.”
Kevin McKenna is Scotland's Feature Writer of the Year
