Church Closings

JANINE UNGVARSKY Times Leader Correspondent

HAZLE TWP. -- In 1893, Italian immigrants brought their faith and a bit of home with them to Hazle Township. They established a church and named it after the patron saint of their hometown, St. Nazarius.

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St. Nazarius choir director and organist Craig Lukatch directs the choir for the last time during a final Mass on Sunday in Pardeesville.

S. John Wilkin/the times leader

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Pastor of St. Nazarius Church, the Rev. Gregory Finn, gives communion for the last time at the church in Pardeesville during the final Mass on Sunday afternoon.

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On Sunday afternoon, the congregation of the small church in Pardeesville was urged to take that same faith and the example of their patron saint with them as they move to new churches.

On what would have been the festival of the feast day of St. Nazarius, parishioners said goodbye to a beloved church closed by the Diocese of Scranton as a part of its consolidation plan.

Even before the bells rang out to call worshipers one last time, the church’s pews were full. People prayed, lit candles and took final pictures of the only church to which some of them ever belonged. Some expressed bitterness at the church’s closing, while others cried and could barely speak.

“I came here all the time, all my life,” said Jean Schiavone. “I feel real bad that it’s closing. I’m going to miss our little church.”

“I spent nine years as an altar boy and the rest taking the collection,” said John J. Russell, 77. “We built this church with our hands,” he said, breaking into tears before the Mass.

Joseph McGarry came back to the church where his mother, Dolores, was choir director for 40 years, to sing “Ave Marie” one final time.

“I was baptized here and married here in 1974,” McGarry said. “My father was buried from here in 1988. This is where I started out in life. This church had a beautiful heritage.”

Ironically, the task of leading the St. Nazarius community through its final days fell to a priest who arrived only a week ago. The church shared a pastor with St. Mary’s in Lattimer and Sacred Heart Shrine in Harleigh, and the Rev. Gregory Finn was only recently transferred to serve as pastor for the churches.

He reminded worshipers of the faith of the Italian immigrant coal miners who built the church as “someplace where they could come out of the darkness and dirt to meet God.”

Finn urged parishioners to recall the faith of St. Nazarius. “I ask you to keep that faith with you, the faith that Jesus is worth everything and we will follow where he leads us.”

The Mass concluded with a procession around the church to recognize important places in the church. Then Finn carried the ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament to a limousine, and statues were taken from the church and loaded into the back of a pickup flying an Italian flag for the six-mile trip to Our Lady of Grace church in Hazleton.

Joseph Sciani, 87, and 91-year-old Rose Delazio — the church’s oldest members — locked the church’s doors.

“I was born and raised here and I’m sorry it’s closing. All of my holy things happened here and now look what happened,” said Delazio.

“I loved the closeness of the people,” said Sciani. “If something happened, everyone would pitch in to help. I was baptized here and it’s very sad. This shouldn’t have happened. Why didn’t (diocesan officials) listen to us?”