Over the weekend, Sacred Heart Catholic Church parishioners were informed that their church will be closing within months and the building, an iconic structure in Roseville, will be put up for sale.
It was less than a year ago when I wrote (below) about the merger imposed by the Detroit Archdiocese, combining Sacred Heart with two nearby Catholic parishes — St. Athanasius in Roseville and Our Lady Queen of All Saints in Fraser.
This three-campus approach for a single, merged parish forced a name change for the three churches, known collectively as St. Pio.
It now appears that the Archdiocese abandoned the merger plan after about 10 months. Our Lady Queen of All Saints will be closing too.

By Chad Selweski
The Macomb Daily
@cbsnewsman on Twitter

June 27, 2014

They still have their beloved towering church.

They still have a Mass on Saturdays.
But the parishioners’ hearts are just not in tune with all the changes coming and the history being lost.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Roseville, one of the oldest parishes in the Detroit Archdiocese, will celebrate its last Sunday Mass this weekend.
A mandated merger with nearby St. Athanasius in Roseville and Our Lady Queen of All Saints in Fraser will limit the 153-year-old Sacred Heart parish to one weekend Mass each week, on Saturdays at 4 p.m.
“We had a dinner last Sunday, in the church basement – the last event as Sacred Heart Parish,” said Pat Chownyk, a lifelong parishioner and the unofficial historian. “I bought a cake and I had them write on it: ‘And the beat goes on, Sacred Heart, founded in 1861.’ And that’s true. We will go on. But we’re resigned to the fact that it’s now going to be St. Pio.”

Yes, the church was also stripped of its name, its identity.
To quell some of the distress and rebellion aimed at the three-parish merger, church officials formed a committee to choose a new name to be shared by all three churches. The final choice by Archbishop Allen Vigneron was St. Pio of Pietrelcina. A recently canonized saint, the namesake is better known as Padre Pio.
Sacred Heart, St. Athanasius and Our Lady Queen of All Saints are among 38 parishes that were singled out in 2012 for church closures or mergers by Vigneron. Many of those changes occurred about a year ago, with some parishes receiving a new name. St. Donald in Roseville was one of the Catholic churches that closed in 2013.

The archbishop recently said that a survey of 41,000 Detroit area Catholics showed that parishes are losing membership faster than was previously anticipated.
“We are a shrinking community,” Vigneron said.
Joe Kohn, director of public relations for the archdiocese, said that the three-parish merger involving Sacred Heart was based on numbers:

• Historical numbers are imprecise but Sacred Heart Parish peaked at more than 3,000 families in the early 1960s. St. Athanasius and Our Lady Queen of All Saints, each established in 1958, both had about 1,200 families in the late 1990s.
• In 2004, the three parishes had a combined membership of 2,541 families (SH had 696; St. A’s had 794; OLQAS had 1,051);
• Currently, the three churches have a combined membership of 1,983 families (SH has 311; St. A’s has 831; OLQAS has 841).

Eventually, one or two of the three churches in this new “cluster” may close.
Sacred Heart, a church that once packed in worshipers on Sundays, with masses simultaneously held on the first-floor and in the bare-bones church setting in the basement, saw its congregation split up numerous times over many decades to create new parishes across Macomb County.
As the oldest suburban parish in the archdiocese, Sacred Heart’s parish boundaries were altered 22 times to pave the way for new Catholic parishes.
Some critics who are not pleased with the merger say that the archdiocese relied upon faulty population estimates to mandate Catholics living just a few miles apart attend church and school at Our Lady Queen of All Saints, located just off of Masonic; or St. Athanasius, located on 13 Mile; or St. Donald, which was on 12 Mile; or St. Barnabas, on 10 Mile in Eastpointe.

For many decades, Sacred Heart has been an iconic structure that towers above Gratiot Avenue, with its bells ringing out hourly across much of Roseville. The church earned a designation several years ago as a historic site.
The first church was built in 1861 in what was then known as Utica Junction. The current church, located near the original site at Utica Road and Gratiot, features Mediterranean Revival architecture and a distinctive green tile roof. It was completed in 1950.
The parishioners from the three churches have not yet met their new pastor, the Rev. Greg Rozborski, who takes over on Tuesday, July 1. “Father Greg” was ordained in 2005 and spent most of his time in Canada before going to Guardian Angels in Clawson.
In addition to the Saturday masses at Sacred Heart, he has set a schedule that calls for masses at Our Lady Queen of All Saints at 6 p.m. on Saturdays and 11 p.m. on Sundays, and at 9 a.m. on Sundays at St. Athanasius.

For Chownyk, 81, who attended grade school at Sacred Heart, was married at Sacred Heart and sent her kids to Sacred Heart schools, thinking about the transition that begins this weekend forces her to hold back tears.

“It will always be Sacred Heart,” she said, “until they chip the cement lettering off the front of the building.”