The Vatican has turned aside an independent Polish parish's bid to scuttle the St. Louis archdiocese's push for control of it, marking a "terribly devastating" defeat for the 124-year-old parish.
In a ruling made public Monday, the Congregation for the Clergy - the Vatican office that handles all parish matters - sided with St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who objected to St. Stanislaus Kosta being run by a lay board of directors.
The parish vigorously had challenged Burke's demand to relinquish control of $9 million in assets and a lay board's leadership, calling that an unlawful takeover.
But the archdiocese said it learned Saturday that the Vatican ruled "the structure of the parish must be conformed promptly to that of every other parish of the Archdiocese of St. Louis."
"The decision, in the form of a decree, was made without qualification," Monsignor Vernon Gardin, the archdiocese's vicar general, said in a statement. "It is the Archbishop's expressed desire that the decision of the Vatican will be implemented in a spirit of reconciliation and Christian charity."
Gardin suggested that should come sooner rather than later, saying he planned to arrange a meeting with the parish's board chief "to discuss the implementation of the decree."
Roger Krasnicki, who in May took the parish's case directly to John Paul II and met in Rome with a papal adviser, called the news "terribly devastating" and "nothing more than a regurgitation of what Burke had been saying all along."
Given the ruling, he said, St. Stanislaus' parishioners - a mix of old world Catholics and U.S.-born descendants of Poles - would weigh their options, ranging from handing over the parish assets to breaking with Rome by bringing in an independent Catholic group to minister.
Another possibility, Krasnicki said, might be turning the church - a red-brick beauty on the National Register of Historic Places - into a museum, touting a history that includes hosting the 1969 visit of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, now Pope John Paul II.
"It's not over with as far as the parishioners are concerned," he said. Serving 278 families, or about 700 people, St. Stanislaus "continues to be punished over the archbishop's desire for power and absolute control over every aspect of every life here."
"For people who have been loyal Roman Catholics, sticking to tradition and the rules of the church, this is absolutely mystifying to them," added Krasnicki, a retired lawyer whose family has been with the parish for more than a century.
The church was established in 1880 when Irish and Polish immigrants settled the neighborhood. In May 1891, then-Archbishop Peter Kenrick and parish leaders signed a deed "forever" conveying church property from the archdiocese to a private parish corporation with a board of lay church members.
The archdiocese now says the structure is contrary to church law and has sought to force the parish to conform to a more traditional structure. If the lay board and parishioners refused to back down, Burke pledged to declare St. Stanislaus no longer a Roman Catholic parish and establish a Polish-speaking parish elsewhere.
"We've been a cornerstone of the community, and now we're being told that all of this is wrong, notwithstanding the fact that every bishop since Kenrick has recognized us," Krasnicki said.
In August, two St. Stanislaus priests were transferred to another Catholic church here, leaving the Polish church with no minister. Burke ordered that as of that time, no Masses, services, sacred rites or sacraments were to be celebrated at the church.
The archdiocese said that would remain until the Polish parish can be "reconciled" with the archdiocese.
Since then, Krasnicki said, the church has had services led by lay people and contacted religious orders of priests uncontrolled by the archdiocese to serve them.