Doors close at North American Martyrs Catholic Church in Monroeville as parish hosts final Mass

Joseph and Rosemary Barbacci and other members of the North American Martyrs choir lifted their voices in unison for the last time at the Monroeville Catholic church.

They had been a part of the worship team for about 30 years and came out of retirement to take part in the final Mass on Tuesday evening.

“Our faith brings us there,” Rosemary said. “We loved the priests that we had, and we just feel very comfortable. We’re saddened by the closing of the church.”

North American Martyrs (NAM) is one of four churches of Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish to close during the first week in August.

The others were St. Bartholomew and St. Gerard Majella churches in Penn Hills and St. Michael in Pitcairn.

The parish was the result of a merger within the past two years.

The Barbaccis live about two miles from NAM and have been active in the church since the mid 1970s.

“Somehow I feel that the church probably could have stayed alive, but for some reason or another we had to lose the church,” Joseph said. He said one of the reasons may be a lack of clergy.

“You can’t have a priest at every church because we don’t have enough to go around,” he said. “We just had a strong feeling for (NAM) being there so long and attached to it.

“There are people who really have some hard feelings about it wondering if other decisions could have been made, but of course, management has to do what it has to do. Maybe under different circumstances they could have stayed open. The church is a beautiful church. It’s very nice and it’s hard to see it close. I wonder what will happen to it.”

In a recent decree from Bishop David Zubik of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, he outlined several reasons as to why NAM had to close. Among them were various maintenance and repair projects that are “beyond the ability of the parish to afford” as well as declining membership throughout the parish in recent years.

Decrees for all four, along with a letter outlining the process Zubik and the Dioceses of Pittsburgh went through to come to the decision, were posted on the parish’s website christthedivineshepherd.org.

Regular Masses of Christ the Divine Shepard will continue at St. Bernadette in Monroeville and St. Susanna in Penn Hills.

Rosemary Barbacci said it was good to see a lot of people attend the final Mass.

The Rev. Thom Miller delivered a message of staying strong in your faith. He reached out to comfort his flock.

“It was a very inspiring message,” Rosemary Barbacci said.

Other Monroeville community members took to social media to voice their concerns about the closures.

“The closing of this church is frustrating and sad for many reasons,” Christine Huff wrote. “The Pittsburgh Catholic Church has become a money grubbing business far more than a faith community.”

Chris Walker was baptized at North American Martyrs in September 1977. He and his wife, Jennifer, had their children baptized in 2015.

“It’s still sad that it will be closing, but the writing was on the wall,” Chris said. “I grew up in Plum off of (Route) 286 near Monroeville and Murrysville, so I’m sure I have some bias. But I never felt there was any connection between the Monroeville churches and the Penn Hills churches. I thought that connecting Monroeville and Plum made far more sense.

“All that being said, I don’t have a magic bullet solution. Since 2000, one out of five Catholic church-goers has vanished. The numbers mean that you can’t operate with the same number of churches in the same areas.”

The Rev. Larry Adams, the parish moderator, shared his thoughts on the churches’ futures prior to their final Masses.

“These churches are where we live our lives and have important moments in our lives, so it’s a difficult time for all of us,” he said. “It’s not that the Diocese is moving stuff around.

“Our hope is that we’ll be able to take some of the visible furnishings from each of these four places that are closing and to place them into the two places that are remaining open so that when you come to any one of our two churches, you recognize that our parish was formed from all of these. So that we remember the legacy of parishes that we’ve had in the past.

“Although the point that we’re at now is very sad, we’re hoping that it positions us for future stability and growth.”

The decree states the church’s stained glass windows, sacred items, non-sacred artifacts and “any work of some significance” will be removed for “reuse in other sacred edicices in the parish or be transmitted to the diocesan archives for use by other ecclesiastical entities.”

Which pieces would be kept and which would be archived have not been announced.

North American Martyrs history

NAM celebrated its first Masses on June 12, 1960 at the Burke Glen Ballroom along Route 22, a short distance from the Monroeville Turnpike interchange.

Its first pastor was the Rev. John McMahon. He presided over at least 650 parishioners.

A year later, plans were made to move to its present location along Haymaker Road.

Initial construction, including a temporary church and school building, was completed in 1963. The church formally opened the following year and was staffed by the Sisters of Mercy.

The Rev. Anthony DeLuca became its pastor in 1970. It had grown to about 850 families and would continue to grow for many years.

St. Michael’s history

In 1895, the Catholic families of Pitcairn organized to build a church of their own, and did so before the end of the year.

It remained a mission of St. Aloysius for the next 10 years. The first regular Sunday Masses at Pitcairn were offered by the late Most Reverend Hugh C. Boyle, later bishop of Pittsburgh, who was then assistant at St. Aloysius.

St. Michael’s formally became a parish in 1905 with the Rev. John Moore as its first resident pastor. The religious education of the children was supervised by the Sisters of Mercy from St. Coleman’s.

The parish would continue to expand and renovate its facilities for many years with the help of Monsignor William Maher, and it eventually became one of the most active parishes in the diocese.

The church was damaged by a series of fires in 1950. The Pitcairn school board made its high school auditorium available for Sunday Mass. The church would eventually be rebuilt and its school continued its education until 1969.