Blessed Sacrament School Clings to Vatican Hope

It’s 8:00 on a sunny morning in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I have planted myself on the sidewalk in front of the Blessed Sacrament School gymnasium.  There’s not a parent or child in sight for morning drop-off, but it has become more important than ever for me to stand out here with my battered cardboard sign proclaiming, “It’s at the Vatican”.

Two months ago, I wrote here Blindsided: When Catholic Parents Get Ousted – Catholic Stand about the battle for this vital city institution, touched off on Valentine’s Day when the Erie Catholic School System Board abruptly announced the closure of our urban K-8 school.  The Board cited limited statistics from a study by Meitler Consulting as justification for the closure of the school, which has served a significant number of minority and low-income families in recent years.  Notably, Erie Catholic did not share the full report with school parents, although past school and deanery studies can be publicly viewed on the Erie Diocese website.

After hiring a canon lawyer and unsuccessfully petitioning the Most Rev. Lawrence T. Persico, Bishop of Erie, to reverse the closure, a group of concerned parents submitted recourse paperwork to the Dicastery for Culture and Education at the Vatican.  At the time I left off, the parents were doing pretty much what I am doing now—standing with signs and waiting for news from Rome…but with a notable difference.

On the 15th of May, the Feast of Our Lady of the Harvest, I was puttering around the hideously teal-carpeted room I call my office when my cell phone rang. It was Dr. Laura Morrison, our canon lawyer. “Dorothy”, she snapped out in her slightly raspy Jersey twang, “They took the case”.

I began babbling.  Since we Fed-Exed the recourse to Vatican City in March, I had spent many afternoons curbside with fellow school moms, fielding questions about when we would hear from Rome, reminding them that the Vatican canon law caseload is worldwide, repeating Laura’s cautionary mantra, “They’re dying of paper cuts at the Dicastery” . Now, at last, they had begun to study our case…and far sooner than we had anticipated, given the monumental events at the Vatican since the 21st of April—the death of Pope Francis, the conclave, and the election of American-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV.

I could hardly contain my eagerness to share the news with the other ladies at school pickup.  I first targeted Christina, a gum-chewing, flag-wielding Italian mamma with a genius for ferreting out information through social interaction.  When I asked her what would make her happy at the moment, she readily replied, “To hear from the Vatican”. However, when I excitedly revealed that they had accepted our case, she merely said, “Mmm-hmm,” and continued to stare blankly at me, munching her gum.  After I had repeated my tidings three or four different ways, she suddenly exclaimed, “What”? and asked me if I was being honest.  It took some effort, alas, to get the news to sink in.

When they finally figured out what was going on, though, joy exploded among the parent group.  What an infusion of hope!  It enabled us to get through the slings and arrows of the last few weeks of school—the emotional outbursts in anticipation of friends lost, the sneaking suspicion that our kids were doing far too much pack-mule labor taking the school apart, the donation of the whimsically-decorated mailbox in which the smallest school kids had deposited their letters to Santa this past December.  As classes finished up on Thursday, June 12, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief at having guided my child through a difficult four months of instability and inconsistency…but I was also immensely glad to be able to concentrate on the undeniable hope for reversal at the Vatican.

While Erie Catholic prohibited news media from the property that day, out of respect, they said, for the emotions of students and staff, I was happy to meet with the press on a side street to express my confidence in the ongoing canon law process.  However, that evening, when I finally got a glimpse at the news, I was dismayed to see a headline that baldly stated, “Final Bell: Blessed Sacrament School Closes for Good June 12”.

People in this community have great affection for the school, which began operations under the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1939.  Headlines like the one above generated numerous expressions of sympathy and nostalgia…but also a great deal of confusion.  Those who persevered to the end of the article would eventually learn that our canon law case was still under review by higher church authority.  Regrettably, some readers didn’t make it that far.  One online commentator noted that it was too bad that the efforts at the Vatican had been unsuccessful.  Another person remarked, with evident satisfaction in being right: “I knew that theywouldn’t do anything”.

I spent the next two days on Facebook courting carpal tunnel by apprising individual posters that we still had an active, compelling case at the Vatican.  Many were grateful for the information, but not everybody.  One person, sporting a rainbow-festooned profile picture, decided to mock my responses by ornamenting them with laughing emoticons.  Since Facebook doesn’t offer many options for clearly expressing derision, her gallant efforts fell rather flat.  Another respondent said that he would miss yelling “Hail Lucifer” at the protesting moms in front of the school each morning.  I told him that I was sorry to disappoint him, but we weren’t going anywhere.  He responded with a particular three-digit number, and I offered him “John 3:16” in exchange.  Facebook apologetics is fun!

After I came up for air, however, I began reflecting on the curious nature of the media response. The readiness of some headlines to consign BSS to the scrap heap of late-lamented Catholic schools is, at least, imprudent from a journalistic perspective.  It is unlikely, for instance, that a reputable editor would pass something like, “Secretariat’s got it in the bag, so justskip the Belmont”.

The history of American media entertains us with some instructive examples. Most notably, just after his come-from-behind election victory in 1948, Harry S. Truman memorialized an embarrassing gaffe by the CHICAGO DAILY TRIBUNE, beaming as he held up a copy of the newspaper proclaiming “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Journalists know that they have to wait and see how things play out.  I confess to even greater puzzlement because the reporters and photojournalists on the ground have shown conscientious attention to covering both sides of the Blessed Sacrament story.

For a long time, I ascribed the tendency of some observers to downplay Blessed Sacrament’s case at the Vatican to widespread unfamiliarity with canon law.  Even cradle Catholics don’t know much about it.  After our shocking Valentine’s Day closure announcement, school parents, frustrated by Erie Catholic’s treatment and unable to gain the ear of the Bishop, were at loose ends.  Someone suggested calling a canon lawyer, and I responded, “I don’t know if that would even apply in this situation”. Admittedly, I felt underequipped to talk to anyone with such a grandiose title…and how much would it cost?

However, we had no other options, and as far as I could tell, we didn’t have much time to agonize over outcomes.  According to the Canon Law Code I found on the Vatican website, we might have only ten days to act, so I gritted my teeth and sent off an email to Dr. Laura Morrison, a woman with a terrifying series of letters after her name.  Then I braced myself for the anticipated, “Sorry, I can’t help you.  Too bad”.

To my wonderment, Dr. Morrison responded promptly and with a keen interest in the details of our situation.  A former Chicago prosecutor, she is a fiercely faithful daughter of the Church who talks fast and thinks faster.  This early in the game, our little group had no established base of operations, and it was dead winter.  Thus, our first impromptu phone conference with Laura took place on speakerphone in the ladies’ room of the local Tim Horton’s, drawing a few raised eyebrows from those on equally urgent business of another nature.

The next several weeks passed in a blur.  I don’t think that the “Concerned Parents” ate or slept much; our children ate a lot of pizza, I believe.  Longtime Blessed Sacrament parents studied yearbooks and pooled their recollections of the school, pre-and-post Erie Catholic.  We drew up game plans, strategies, press releases.  On a chilly day, two of us who had been holding protest signs huddled into a car and got on the phone with Laura to finalize our petition to Bishop Persico.  When he refused to reopen the school, a group of us wrangled a meeting with him to try to mend matters.  And when that avenue, too, proved fruitless, we had no other choice but to appeal to the Vatican.

After receiving the news that the Dicastery had accepted our case, I said to Laura, “They don’t take every one that comes up, do they”?  She assured me that this was correct.  It has meant volumes to the parents to know that their concerns are being taken seriously at the highest levels of the Church.  By the same token, it has been very distressing to meet with disbelief and cynicism from the street and even from the pews.

Not long after the news reported the new development at the Vatican, an online poster asked, “Can the Vatican really FORCE a school to stay open”? Recently, as I was catching an acquaintance up on the case before Mass, he shook his head and declared, “It’s over”.  Do American Catholics really have so little faith in the leadership of the Church?  To do the naysayers justice, their words are only echoing those of the pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church, Rev. Philip Pinczewski, who said in a June 1 bulletin letter, “While our school will close for good this month, against all our hopes that it would not be so, we must continue our mission as a Catholic parish”.

Fr. Phil, a mild-mannered, soft-spoken priest who grew up on Erie’s Polish East Side, has been a familiar figure among the school families for many years.  When the young man who had volunteered to play Santa Claus at this year’s annual Christmas Fair fell unexpectedly ill, the PTO roped Fr. Phil into donning the beard and red suit.  One memorable picture from the event depicts the parish priest garbed as St. Nick, cradling a miniature goat on loan from a local farm.  At a recent school carnival day, impish middle-schoolers clustered around a rented dunking booth, taking shots at the beloved pastor, who seemed to be enjoying himself as much as they were.  During the prayer service on the last day of school, he struggled to maintain his composure, as did many of the teachers and staff.

Whatever his views may be on the ongoing canon law case, Fr. Phil has promised obedience to the local bishop…and he still has a parish to run.  In another recent bulletin, he informed parishioners that he had signed a year’s lease, renting a portion of the spacious school building to an educational support agency.  While not 100 percent happy to see their beloved school in the hands of a secular organization, school supporters consider this move a reasonable measure to cover building utility costs until word comes back from the Vatican.

Meanwhile, Erie Catholic has still failed to provide families with an executive summary of the Meitler Report, promised as a “next step in transparency” in a March 8 press release.  Furthermore, in an April meeting with parents, school system leadership disclosed that a considerable bequest from a local priest, originally intended to build the Blessed Sacrament students a new playground, would be parceled out in one-time tuition breaks (estimated then to be several hundred dollars) to each student remaining within the Erie Catholic fold.  This decision was announced despite parent comments made about the inappropriateness of draining this fund in the face of an ongoing canon law case.

When one school mom, through her legal advisor, queried Erie Catholic leadership about these subjects and others of interest to Blessed Sacrament parents, the school system’s attorney replied that the questions were “hypothetical in nature and involve matters related to your client’s contentious legal process currently pending against ECSS in another forum”.  On June 16, another Blessed Sacrament parent revealed on Facebook that she had reached out to Erie Catholic twice via email, asking about future parent representation on the Board.  At that time, she said, she had received no acknowledgment of any kind.

While some characterize parents’ efforts to obtain justice for Blessed Sacrament families as a lot of mere “yipping”, Joe McClane, host of the nationally syndicated radio program A CATHOLIC TAKE, sees the potential for the Vatican decision to have far-reaching implications for the future of the Church.  On June 10, in the episode entitled “Pope XIV and the Fight for What You Believe In,“ he said, “I think if the school wins its canonical case, that sets a precedent, because there’s gonna be a lot more of these types of cases, it seems…there’s an effort to consolidate, to close, to sell off, you know, because of the mass exodus in the Churches…this is our reality because we have neglected our one true mission to make disciples of all nations”.

In the face of great uncertainty about the future of their children and of the urban Church in Erie, Blessed Sacrament parents continue to pin their hopes for justice on their case at the Vatican, inspired by the faith of those who have sought—and won—recourse in the past.  The Bishop, who is himself a canon lawyer, knows better than most people around here about the “Miracle of St. Casimir’s,” an astonishing intervention of canon law that transpired around the pond in Cleveland, Ohio.  In 2009, when Bishop Richard Lennon ordered the closure of dozens of parishes, citing urban population decline, the stalwart parishioners of St. Casimir’s, the second-oldest church in the city, gathered for 139 weeks to pray in front of the padlocked church doors, frequently buffeted by bitter winter gusts from Lake Erie.  Three years later, they received the joyful tidings that the Congregation for the Clergy had reversed the closure.

As a treasure so nearly forfeited and bravely fought for, St. Casimir’s Church continues to spur parishioners to greater involvement in both the parish and the neighborhood.  In 2020, a significant grant from the Northeast Ohio Sewer District provided the church with permeable pavers and stormwater collection basins, giving St. Casimir’s the distinction of being the first Green Infrastructure Church of the Cleveland Diocese and improving the quality of water for all those living in the area.  Students from a nearby grade school decorated rain barrels with pictures of stray animals, a gentle nod to the Franciscan Sisters who once taught in the parish school.  The sanctuary pulsates with the rich history of many generations; when you walk through its doors, you retrace the footsteps of a celebrated Polish cardinal who pronounced the words of consecration here on a visit to America in 1969.

On the wall of my teal-carpeted office hangs a faded program, an inheritance from my irascible, energetic, utterly faithful Polish grandmother, who brought it home from a banquet held at Pittsburgh’s Weber Hall Hotel in honor of that same Polish cardinal, during that same trip to America.  Penciled along the bottom margin, with a big looping “W,” is the autograph of this holy priest, Karol Wojtyła, who was soon to be known by another name, who would oversee the revision of the 1917 Canon Law Code, who on April 27, 2014 would be canonized as Pope Saint John Paul II.   In October 1995, when he remarked to a vast crowd of pilgrims in New York’s Central Park, “You are young, but the pope is old,” I was a shy sixteen-year-old small-town girl standing there to hear his invitation to the work of evangelization.  Little did I expect to be one of a group of ordinary parents fighting, decades later, to preserve the mission of a Catholic school in the heart of the city.

These days, when anxiety about the outcome at the Vatican threatens to engulf my spirit, I strive to keep in mind the words of a fellow worker in our parish vineyard:

The secret is that you have to give Blessed Sacrament School to God…because it is all His…and He is working…All anxieties are to be cast upon the Lord…which means humbling ourselves and admitting to Him that we are not in control.  He is always listening and watching the hearts.

In this Jubilee Year of Hope, Lord, turn our hearts always to hope in You!

Joe McClane (A CATHOLIC TAKE) Interview, June 10, 2025 – “The Fight for What You Believe In”:https://www.youtube.com/live/rJ51P8QKgok?si=rkq0Z69pdSqNimp8&t=2213