The Loot*

*As Hilaire Belloc entitled the events that succeeded the closing of the English monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530’s.

We had reported earlier here and here on the “end of the churches”: the latest steps in the process of the sale of the closed Catholic churches of New York. Now comes The New York Times with further details:

The decision to deconsecrate — which means transform the houses of worship to secular purposes — was announced in decrees posted on the archdiocese website in June. The decree for each church said the move would allow the start of “negotiations that may lead to the sale of the property.” Two canon lawyers said it was the largest number of deconsecrations they had ever seen in a single day.

If history is any indication, the properties might be sold, razed and rebuilt as residential buildings. In a string of multimillion-dollar deals, a handful of Catholic churches were sold to developers in the past several years. For example, St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem, its school and a nearby lot were sold to a developer for $6 million in 2012. Our Lady of Vilnius Church, by the Holland Tunnel entrance, was sold for $13 million in 2013 and was flipped a year later for more than $18 million. And the Church of St. Vincent de Paul and two other parish properties in Chelsea were sold to a hotelier for $50.4 million last year. The sale of one recently deconsecrated church, the Chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz in Little Italy, to a developer has been approved. The church will fetch over $7 million.

Ferre-Sadurni, Luis, “18 Shuttered Catholic Churches May Soon Be Up for Sale”
(The New York Times, August 7, 2017)