US Catholics say sale of church to Muslims "no big deal"
The diocese of Buffalo, New York, announced that the maintenance costs for the Gothic-style St. Ann’s Church have become prohibitively high. Read Full Article at RT.com.
TroibNews 
The future of a Gothic cathedral in upstate New York has sparked widespread debate online.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has issued a statement regarding the sale of St. Ann’s Church to the local Muslim community, following a social media post that ignited a wave of outraged comments. Built in 1886, St. Ann’s Church closed in 2007 due to a lack of parishioners and was sold to a holding company in 2022. Recent discussions have focused on this event as an emblem of the decline of Christianity in the United States.
“Sold to the Islamic community for $250,000 who are converting the historic church into a mosque,” remarked an account named ‘Father R. Vierling’ on X, alongside photos of the cathedral. This post attracted 11 million views.
The uproar in the comments prompted the original poster to clarify that the anger should not be directed at the Islamic community. He attributed the church’s closure to “the changing demographics of the area and the inability to financially support the complex,” emphasizing that this situation is unfolding in previously large, urban dioceses nationwide.
Financial issues were indeed a significant factor in the sale, as confirmed by the Diocese of Buffalo in an interview with The Tablet, a Catholic publication. According to diocesan spokesman Joe Martone, repairs to the church would have exceeded $30 million at the time.
“It needed a tremendous amount of money in repairs,” Martone stated. “The work that was needed was incredibly expensive and beyond the scope of the diocese.”
The Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy in 2020, facing 900 allegations of sexual abuse involving clergy and staff.
In November 2022, the shuttered St. Ann’s, along with an adjoining school and convent complex, was sold to Buffalo Crescent Holdings. While local media indicated that the company intended to transform the site into a mosque, neither the Islamic Center nor the Buffalo Diocese confirmed this at the time.
Martone added that the diocese had released the property to “profane use,” a term that refers to closed churches no longer operated as houses of worship, thus allowing for alternative purposes, so long as they are not “sacrilegious, immoral, or scandalous.”
“We’ve had other properties that we’ve sold within the diocese that have been sold to other religious groups that have used them for their faith services, so as a general rule, the diocese does not have a problem with that,” he mentioned.
Buffalo, a city with a population nearing 280,000 on the shores of Lake Erie close to the US-Canada border, has experienced an increase in immigrants from Yemen, Somalia, Bangladesh, and Iraq since 2000.
James del Carmen contributed to this report for TROIB News
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has issued a statement regarding the sale of St. Ann’s Church to the local Muslim community, following a social media post that ignited a wave of outraged comments. Built in 1886, St. Ann’s Church closed in 2007 due to a lack of parishioners and was sold to a holding company in 2022. Recent discussions have focused on this event as an emblem of the decline of Christianity in the United States.
“Sold to the Islamic community for $250,000 who are converting the historic church into a mosque,” remarked an account named ‘Father R. Vierling’ on X, alongside photos of the cathedral. This post attracted 11 million views.
The uproar in the comments prompted the original poster to clarify that the anger should not be directed at the Islamic community. He attributed the church’s closure to “the changing demographics of the area and the inability to financially support the complex,” emphasizing that this situation is unfolding in previously large, urban dioceses nationwide.
Financial issues were indeed a significant factor in the sale, as confirmed by the Diocese of Buffalo in an interview with The Tablet, a Catholic publication. According to diocesan spokesman Joe Martone, repairs to the church would have exceeded $30 million at the time.
“It needed a tremendous amount of money in repairs,” Martone stated. “The work that was needed was incredibly expensive and beyond the scope of the diocese.”
The Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy in 2020, facing 900 allegations of sexual abuse involving clergy and staff.
In November 2022, the shuttered St. Ann’s, along with an adjoining school and convent complex, was sold to Buffalo Crescent Holdings. While local media indicated that the company intended to transform the site into a mosque, neither the Islamic Center nor the Buffalo Diocese confirmed this at the time.
Martone added that the diocese had released the property to “profane use,” a term that refers to closed churches no longer operated as houses of worship, thus allowing for alternative purposes, so long as they are not “sacrilegious, immoral, or scandalous.”
“We’ve had other properties that we’ve sold within the diocese that have been sold to other religious groups that have used them for their faith services, so as a general rule, the diocese does not have a problem with that,” he mentioned.
Buffalo, a city with a population nearing 280,000 on the shores of Lake Erie close to the US-Canada border, has experienced an increase in immigrants from Yemen, Somalia, Bangladesh, and Iraq since 2000.
James del Carmen contributed to this report for TROIB News
