Members of a predominantly Black Catholic church in East Baltimore have asked the Archdiocese of Baltimore for permission to buy the building — and keep their historic parish going — rather than have it shuttered as part of the archdiocese’s sweeping plan to consolidate its operations in the city.

A committee of members of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, a parish in the East Baltimore-Midway neighborhood, is proposing to purchase the massive Gothic building that has been its home for 152 years.

The archdiocese currently plans to close the church as part of Seek the City to Come, its campaign to reconfigure the footprint of the Catholic church in Baltimore City amid declining numbers in the pews, shrunken revenues and soaring maintenance costs.

The plan calls for 61 parishes in Baltimore and a few nearby suburbs to be merged into 30 worship and ministry sites. Church officials arrived at a final version in May following a two-year process that included in-person meetings with parish leaders and church members, drew on research by independent consultants, and featured numerous public hearings.

Like 30 other parishes, St. Ann’s would fold and its building would likely be put up for sale under the plan. Its assets would be transferred to St. Francis Xavier Church, a historic African American Catholic house of worship that is to become the headquarters of an enlarged parish in East Baltimore.

St. Wenceslaus, a historically Black church in Milton-Montford, would also be absorbed into the parish.

The St. Ann’s proposal calls for the current parish to buy its Gothic home and adjacent rectory from the archdiocese, then maintain the buildings and pay honoraria to retired priests for work that would include celebrating Sunday Masses, according to a copy obtained by The Sun.

The church would pay for the sale and maintenance out of the more than $920,000 it has in a bank account, according to a letter the group said it sent to Archbishop William E. Lori by certified mail Wednesday.

St. Ann’s built the reserve largely by selling the school building that housed the affiliated Mother Seton Academy for $750,000 two decades ago, letting the interest on the proceeds accrue, and sponsoring regular fundraising drives, including a number that took place during the pandemic.

“[In order] not to burden the Archdiocese with facility expenses and the crisis shortage of priests, which led to the Seek the City initiative, we would use our funds to maintain our church buildings and pay retired priests an honorarium (to supplement their less-than-adequate retirement income) to say Sunday and Holy Day Masses,” the letter reads. “We would dedicate our efforts to grow our congregation, utilizing this extended lifetime of St. Ann’s church family.”

A spokesperson for the archdiocese, Yvonne Wenger, said in an email to The Sun that the diocese hadn’t received the letter as of Friday afternoon.

The archdiocese’s communications director, Christian Kendzierski, said it would be premature to comment on such a proposal at this stage because decisions about realignment have yet to be formalized under canon law — and because in any case, the archdiocese will not consider proposals for property usage or sale until early next year.

Still, a group of long-standing parishioners who have adopted the name “Save St. Ann’s” said Thursday they believe the Seek the City process moved too quickly and that its organizers gave short shrift to the church’s unique identity and its place in the community.

The proposed closure of St. Ann’s, along with those of Blessed Sacrament in Pen-Lucy, St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans and St. Pius X in Towson, would mean “no Catholic presence along the entire Greenmount-York Road corridor,” said Erich March, the vice president of March Funeral Homes and a St. Ann’s trustee, a “dramatic departure” for a city that has boasted a strong Catholic presence since the 1690s.

Church member Sharon Johnson-Stewart said she believes Seek the City favors the growth of “megachurches” at the expense of smaller parishes with rich histories and closer ties to their communities.

She and others pointed out that St. Ann’s was the home church of Cardinal Lawrence Shehan, the Archbishop of Baltimore between 1961 and 1974 and the man who in 1974 ordained the Rev. Donald Sterling, the first Black man to be ordained a priest in the Baltimore archdiocese.

Further, Johnson-Stewart continued, the history-making continues. The church’s social justice committee has been “at the forefront” of a campaign to get six pioneers of the faith, including Baltimore’s own Mother Mary Lange, canonized as the first African American saints in the history of the Catholic Church.

Members of the group made the case in face-to-face meetings with Vatican representatives in Rome in 2023.

Another longtime parishioner, Ralph Moore, said St. Ann’s congregation is largely elderly, that many members have long planned to be laid to rest on the premises when the time comes, and that closing the church would require the disinterment of its founders, William and Mary Ann Kennedy, who are buried under its center aisle — an idea to which he said the Kennedys’ descendants strongly object.

Kennedy was a sea captain who plied the waters along Mexico’s east coast in the early 1800s. As the story goes, his ship, The Wanderer, was in the midst of a dangerous storm when he made God a vow that he would start a church one day if he and his crew were spared. One of the anchors from that ship is still on display at St. Ann’s.

The prevailing view was that members of St. Ann’s have been as fiscally responsible over the decades as the archdiocese has asked them to be, but that their success doesn’t seem to matter

“We’ve paid our rent, but we’re being evicted,” March said.

Kendzierski said the archdiocese empathizes with such feelings at St. Ann’s and anywhere else Seek the City is calling for adjustments.

“The Archdiocese understands that this may be a challenging time for our parishioners who will be experiencing change in their parish life,” he wrote. “We are praying that those who are facing these changes will embrace the newly formed parish and work together in their new community to create a vibrant and evangelizing center for worship and service.

“Once the letter is received it will be reviewed as part of the process. We are committed to thoroughly evaluating each submission to ensure that all deserving proposals receive the attention they deserve.”