Answered prayer: Filipino chapel in NY won’t close yet

MANILA, Philippines - A week after announcing the imminent closure of the San Lorenzo Ruiz chapel in New York, the archdiocese on Tuesday said the four-year-old church won’t be padlocked yet after all. “The Chapel is not closing...it will remain open for the Filipino community," Archdiocese of New York spokesperson Joseph Zwilling told online news site the Filipino Reporter in an interview. “I was incorrect when I spoke to you last week." Zwilling was earlier reported saying the chapel was closing on Jan. 31. The chapel was designated for the Filipino Apostolate of the Archdiocese of New York and was named as the “official Church of Filipinos" by Edward Cardinal Egan in June 2005. Speculations about the chapel’s future have been floating around for some time because it has not generated the kind of following that the Archdiocese of New York had hoped it would. Had there been a dynamic stream of people coming to the chapel, they say, it would have been elevated into a full-fledged parish church. Instead, it is now facing the possibility of closure. The replacement of Fr. Erno Diaz, Philippine Pastoral Center, head, is said to be the first step. A performance review of the San Lorenzo Ruiz chapel is not unusual. Filipino community news agency, Philippine News learned that other ethnic Catholic centers have been padlocked as part of the Archdiocese’s “realignment" efforts. One of the most recent closures is the Our Lady of Vilnius established in 1905 for Lithuanian New Yorkers. It had its final services in 2007. Other ethnic churches closed as part of realignment are the Church of St. Adelbert in the Bronx serving the Polish community; the Church of St. Adelbert in Manhattan or the Belgian National Parish; and the Church of St. Ann, formerly known as the Armenian Rite Cathedral & Shrine. The Archdiocese is not targeting ethnic churches in the realignment. Regular parishes that consistently report low attendance are candidates for closures and/or mergers, just like Catholic schools with poor enrollment. The idea behind ethnic churches and/or chapels is to serve communities with a large Catholic following, offering traditional services including the use of the ethnic language. In the case of the San Lorenzo Ruiz chapel, masses in Tagalog are available. - Mark Ubalde, with reports from Cristina DC Pastor, GMANews.TV