St. Bernard Parish, a Catholic church on the edge of Wauwatosa’s downtown village area, will close and the property will be sold to a developer, its pastor said in a letter to parishioners on Sunday.
Church operations will merge with its sister parish, Christ King, said the Rev. Phillip Bogacki, pastor of both St. Bernard and Christ King. The merged parish will move entirely to the Christ King campus, and use its name, Bogacki said.
The closure of St. Bernard, at 1500 N. Wauwatosa Ave., follows the shuttering at the end of the last school year of the adjoining Wauwatosa Catholic School because of a financial deficit and low student enrollment.
Beyond that, the move reflects what is happening to scores of houses of worship nationwide facing existential threats such as declining membership, aging congregations and an unwinnable financial situation.
Bogacki called attention in his letter to changes in demographics and churchgoing habits in Wauwatosa, a city of about 48,000 people with five Catholic parishes and six more nearby. As is the story elsewhere in the country, Catholic institutions were at their peak in the 1950s and 60s, and a downturn began in the 1970s. People began to have fewer children, and the high concentration of Catholic churches and schools in the area no longer fits the needs of residents.
“Our area parishes — as a group — have been operating far below their intended capacity for several decades,” he said. “The moment to choose to change our trajectory is now.”
Other local Catholic churches have closed, merged
Parish leaders have chosen a developer to whom they will sell the St. Bernard property, and proceeds of the sale will serve as an infusion of cash to carry the newly merged parish forward, Bogacki said.
The St. Bernard campus will continue to be used while the new developer, who was not named in Bogacki’s letter, seeks approval for its plans from the city. That could take six to nine months, he said.
“I am confident about our future. I challenge us to become larger and more robust than our two parishes within the next few years,” Bogacki said. “God placed us in this moment to create something new and exciting.”
St. Bernard joins other local Catholic parishes that have merged with neighboring churches. Last year St. Florian Parish in West Milwaukee shut down and merged with Holy Assumption Parish in West Milwaukee. In 2021, the Catholic parish in Riverwest, Our Lady of Divine Providence, decommissioned its Our Lady of Czestochowa location after it sat unused for years.
When St. Bernard Parish held its first Mass in 1911, it became the first Catholic church in Wauwatosa. Construction on the current parish complex began in 1962.
Wauwatosa Catholic School, the elementary school on the grounds, was operated jointly by St. Bernard and St. Pius X parishes beginning in 2011.