After 138 years, Hillyard's historic St. Patrick Parish closes church and merges with St. Francis Xavier

Parishioner Louise Andrews arrived at her historic St. Patrick church in Hillyard on a Tuesday afternoon in May to the typical neighborhood cacophony.

Outside, preschoolers on recess plays in nearby Kehoe Park, teenagers roll by on skateboards, and a man works on the engine of his car.

Once she's in the church, the din is instantly muted as she closes the imposing wood doors. It's eerily quiet in the space that hosted its last mass a month ago.

"St. Pat's as we know it is gone," she said.

After 138 years , Hillyard's St. Patrick Parish closed in April, its decadeslong worshippers merging with nearby parish St. Francis Xavier to become the new parish of St. Bernadette.

Some have generational ties to St. Patrick. Its first early members worked on the Great Northern Railroad. The church has largely counted on families who've attended for generations. Many immigrant families attended service there, Andrews said. She's been a member for the last 40 years, since she and her husband bought a home near Rogers High School and brought up their son in the church.

Assembled four years after Washington became a state, St. Patrick Parish was among the oldest in the Spokane Diocese.

"Up north in the Diocese: Colville, Chewelah, some of those are much earlier than we are," Andrews said. "But of the ones in town proper, we're one of the older ones."

Memories of Sunday mass, St. Patrick's Day feasts in honor of their namesake, watching Mother Teresa canonized as a saint with her sisters fill Andrews' minds as she walks the now-empty pews.

It's "bittersweet," Andrews said of the merger.

"Of course we'll miss it, because our son was raised here and all that, but the opportunities for the future far outweigh that," she said.

The merger was necessitated by a slew of factors that aren't unique to St. Patrick, including a "gradual decline" of parishioners over the years, according to a letter from Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly sent to the church.

"Fewer families with fewer students contributed to the closure of your school in 2013," the letter reads. "Fewer families led to decreasing finances being able to support the ongoing operations of the parish."

For the past 10 years, the parish relied on payments from leasing their school building as a "much-needed financial lifeline," the Bishop wrote, including to Chesterton Academy of Notre Dame and an international charter school, according to their website. Also playing a factor is the consistent decline of priests within the Spokane Diocese over the last 25 years, according to the letter. Most priests serve multiple parishes; the Rev. Richard Semple oversaw both former parishes St. Patrick and St. Francis Xavier and now leads St. Bernadette.

"Change is hard," wrote Bishop Thomas Daly in a letter to the church at its closure. "I understand your ties to St. Patrick Parish and its long tenured history. Your families have celebrated the Sacraments for decades within the walls of your church. May the graces received for these Sacraments guide us through these difficult times."

St. Patrick's situation mirrors that of other parishes around the whole Catholic church system. More consolidation is likely in store, given trends in Catholicism surrounding church membership, financial woes and a decline in ordained priests to oversee parishes, said Kevin Brown, a Gonzaga lecturer and director of the school's religious studies graduate program.

According to a Pew Research Center survey on religious affiliation across the U.S., the decline in Catholic identity since the 1960s has begun to level off. In Washington, some 14% of adults are Catholic, but that doesn't mean they're all coming to church or tithing enough to support operations, Brown said.

Some 30% of Catholic adults attend mass weekly, according to the survey, which is down 40% of what it was 20 years ago.

"Less people regularly attending, regularly participating in parish life, is going to lead to less financial support to maintain parishes, as well as fewer people in the pews," Brown said.

As mentioned by the bishop, Brown said there are far fewer ordained priests to staff churches. A significant portion of them are retirement-age, with a lack of young priests to fill their roles.

This is pretty universal, Brown said, but Spokane is unique from other communities where he's lived and worshipped. Rather than a few large churches that serve bigger geographical swaths, there are several smaller neighborhood parishes sprinkled around town like St. Patrick or St. Francis Xavier.

"When they're very neighborhood parishes and mass attendance is down, there are fewer priests able to be ministered as pastors or to lead the parish, then it becomes just a personnel problem," Brown said. "It's a trend, what's called the 'priest shortage.' "

Given these trends, parish consolidation isn't new within the Catholic Church, Brown said, and he expects it will continue especially in communities like Spokane with smaller parishes.

Most of the St. Patrick Parish joined the merged St. Bernadette Parish, Andrews said. The combined group now worships at the church home of St. Francis Xavier, located at 545 East Providence Ave. It's a newer and larger building than the St. Patrick church at 5025 N. Nelson St.

The parish intends to sell its property in the heart of Hillyard, though no final decisions have been made, wrote Sarah Potter, spokesperson for the Diocese. The parcels includes the church itself, two school buildings and a convent housing four Missionaries of Charity, theological sisters of Mother Teresa who wear her signature white and blue habit. The four sisters who still live in the convent are looking for new housing closer to the combined parish.

The church itself and land are worth around $693,000, according to Spokane County property records. The school plot, located at 2706 E. Queen Ave., is worth around $1.74 million, according to property records.

The parish is older than the church itself. Built in 1909, the parish has paid for renovations over the years. An earlier version of the church was much more ornate and imposing. A large gilded dome bordered with the words "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" overarched the pulpit, where Andrews can only imagine a priest would stand to face pews packed with the working-class families of Hillyard.

Perhaps the most eyecatching part of the church, light filtered through a large stained glass rose window at the front of the church, depicting namesake St. Patrick surrounded by other Holy figures.

"When the sun pops in, in the mornings, it's just stunning," she said.

A leader in her parish, Andrews has spent many hours in the church since its formal closure going through storage and helping to determine what they will integrate into the new St. Bernadette space and what stays behind or is donated to another church.

"People have said, 'You're just going to get rid of it,' and no, there's too much history here," she said. "Just the religious meaning of all of this here, even if you're not Catholic, just the Christian meaning of everything."

In the first months of existing as a united parish, the two groups have blended well, Andrews said. Their priest held several listening sessions with each group, who also hosted united picnics and functions to get to know each other.

"Our pastor has been very, very good at keeping people informed," she said.

She's pleased to attend mass in a new space, surrounded by many newer, and younger, faces than were at St. Patrick. Over time, the group will marry traditions observed when they were independent parishes and build some of their own, like the annual feast hosted the day associated with their parish namesake, now St. Bernadette.

"We will honor the past, but also not get too hung up in it so that we don't lose track of the future," she said, her voice echoing in the empty St. Patrick church.

While she'll miss the comfort of her church home of decades, that's not all that matters to her, she said.

"For me, church and faith is not a building," Andrews said. "It's worshipping; it's the community you worship with."

Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.

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