{"id":15901,"date":"2025-10-26T19:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T19:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/15901\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T19:00:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T19:00:13","slug":"pittsburgh-area-catholic-parish-to-close-nearly-all-of-its-church-buildings-wpxi-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/15901\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh area Catholic parish to close nearly all of its church buildings \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">St. Maurice Church in Forest Hills will be the only remaining St. Joseph of the Worker Parish if the Bishop says it\u2019s OK. The other seven Catholic churches are slated to close their doors due to significant financial constraints.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cIt seems like one church after the other that I belong to is being closed, and then I have to find a new one,\u201d said Joe Pricener of Monroeville.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">For Catholics like Pricener, finding a church to permanently call home has been difficult lately. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cAs soon as I get comfortable in the new one, they close it and you go to another one,\u201d Pricener said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Talk about closing St. Joseph the Worker Parish facilities started last October. Now, St. John Fisher Church in Churchill is set to close along with Sacred Heart, Saint Anselm, Madonna Del Castello, Good Shepherd, St. Jude the Apostle and St. Colman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Sister Sandy Pelusi belongs to St. John Fisher Church. She said, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to lose. I\u2019ve lost my parish from when I was a child. We\u2019ve lost a lot of things in our lives, but God is with us, and we have to move on.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Thursday, parishioners found out that St. Joseph the Worker Parish would recommend to Bishop Mark Eckman to close seven of its eight church buildings, leaving only St. Maurice in Forest Hills. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">In a statement, St. Joseph the Worker Parish said, \u201cWe know this is a difficult moment for many parishioners, and each church will be honored with opportunities for remembrance and a final closing Mass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Pricener said, \u201cA lot of reasons for it, but they definitely are in trouble as far as I\u2019m concerned. They\u2019re losing the young people, and it\u2019s just us seniors that continue to go to church.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The bishop is expected to make his decision in December. The closures would not begin until January of 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92025 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Maurice Church in Forest Hills will be the only remaining St. Joseph of the Worker Parish if&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11678,869,5900,11662,11663,11677,11674,11668,11673,11679,139,859,73,75,74,11671,11672,11676,11670,11681,11669,11675,11680,11667,11666,11664,11665,420,860],"class_list":["post-15901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-bishop","tag-channel_11","tag-christine_dantonio","tag-church_hill","tag-forest_hills","tag-god","tag-good_shepherd","tag-joe_priner","tag-madonna_del_castello","tag-mark_eckman","tag-news","tag-ott_news","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-sacred_heart","tag-saint_anselm","tag-saint_coleman","tag-saint_john_fisher_church","tag-saint_joseph_the_worker","tag-saint_joseph_the_worker_parish","tag-saint_jude_the_apostle","tag-saint_maurice","tag-st-_joseph","tag-st-_marys_church","tag-swissville","tag-turtle_creek","tag-video","tag-wpxi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}