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Mark Anthoine is part of the task force that recommended closing two Lewiston churches: St. Patrick’s, above, and St. Joseph’s. Anthoine, whose family has a long history with St. Patrick’s, says the recommendation is “hard to justify emotionally.”

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Catholics attend Mass at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston. The entire Lewiston parish now has only three priests.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Lewiston could be sold if task force recommendations are carried out. The building’s age and location made it vulnerable.

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LEWISTON — Mark Anthoine wasn't prepared for the sadness and disappointment he heard in his mother's voice.

Barbara Anthoine, 72, had just learned that a parish task force had recommended closing and selling St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church. That's where she was married in 1957, where most of her five children were baptized and married, and where, just last December, the family, including several grandchildren, filled three pews for Christmas Eve Mass.

"Well," Barbara Anthoine asked her son, "where are we supposed to go now?"

Mark Anthoine, 47, is a member of the task force that recommended closing and selling two Lewiston churches – St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's – in a report released last weekend.

It's the latest move in the consolidation of Maine's Catholic parishes, which still represent one-fifth of the state's 1.3 million residents. It also reflects an overall decline in the number of Catholics across New England, according to a recent national survey.

Despite Anthoine's personal involvement in both St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's, he had promised to be objective in reviewing the building needs of a parish struggling with declining membership and increasing budget deficits.

If St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's ultimately close, which is considered likely, the Lewiston parish would still have three Catholic churches, including the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the largest Catholic church building in Maine.

Even so, Anthoine, an insurance broker, was struck by his mother's question. He realized how difficult it would be for many people to see two more churches close in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

"I didn't know what to say," Anthoine recalled recently, standing outside St. Patrick's, in the heart of the city's economically challenged downtown. "I can justify the recommendations because we analyzed the numbers, but it's hard to justify emotionally."

PARISH CONSOLIDATION CONTINUES

The pending closures of St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's, which was Lewiston's first Catholic church, are the latest evidence of a consolidation of Maine parishes that started in 2004. Since then, the number of parishes in Maine has fallen from 135 to 83, and 14 churches have closed, said Bill Schulz, director of parish planning for the diocese.

By 2010, the diocese will have about 70 parishes, served by 61 to 63 priests. At its peak in the 1950s, the diocese had 229 priests.

Lewiston once had six Catholic churches, before St. Mary's closed in 2000 and became the Franco-American Heritage Center. In January, the five remaining churches, including Holy Cross and Holy Family, were combined into Prince of Peace Parish in anticipation of further consolidation. Where each church once had two or three priests, sometimes more, the entire Lewiston parish now has only three priests.

Monsignor Marc Caron, parish pastor, appointed the seven-member task force last November. He asked the group of local business leaders and real estate experts to give him their best advice in the face of a $180,000 annual operating deficit. Their recommendations, which include other parish properties, aren't cast in stone, but they are reasonable, Caron said.

"It's very sad," said Caron, a Lewiston native. "We see these churches as part of ourselves and part of the landscape. We'd like to see them continue as they've always been, but the community isn't as it's always been. We're at a crossroads, and we can't afford the property that we have."

The changes in Lewiston reflect an overall decline in the number of Catholics throughout New England, according to a study released last month by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The data gathered in the American Religious Identification Survey 2008 include all people who call themselves Catholic.

According to the survey, the number of residents...