Landmark Tacoma church faces sale, likely demolition after Archdiocese calls it ‘profane’
A historic icon on Tacoma’s skyline could soon be a heap of rubble.
Holy Rosary Church, a 103-year-old Catholic church described as “Tacoma’s Notre Dame” by a former mayor, will no longer be a place of Catholic worship and will be sold, the Archdiocese of Seattle announced this week.
“The decision to sell the property at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary was not easy and was grounded in months of discernment, prayer, analysis and discussion,” Pope St. John XXIII Parish leaders said in a statement. The parish includes the former Holy Rosary Parish.
Meanwhile, the group that organized to save the church from the wrecking ball is digging in its heels in its yearslong attempt to save the historic church.
“To just get kicked in the teeth like this has shaken a lot of people’s faith,” said Jon Carp, a leader with Save Tacoma’s Landmark Church which formed in 2019.
The church, with its 210-foot-tall steeple, is an icon for Tacomans and those passing through the city on nearby Interstate 5. Despite its age, it’s the newer version of a predecessor where famed crooner Bing Crosby’s parents were married.
The Gothic Revival architecture features pointed arches, intricate stained glass windows and ornate details.
Decaying
A series of blows brought the church at 424 S. 30th St. and its parish to its knees in an already tough climate for the Catholic religion with declining membership and a deficit of priests.
Holy Rosary had six pastors since 2000 until it finally merged with other parishes in 2021. That number includes the Rev. Michael Wagner, who collapsed from a cerebral aneurysm while celebrating Mass in April 2018. He died three weeks later.
Later that same year, a 5-by-5 foot piece of plaster ceiling fell into the choir loft. After an inspection revealed dangerous conditions inside and outside the building, a fence was erected around the church. The building has since been unoccupied.
When the parish’s church with its robin egg blue interior closed, parishioners were forced to hold Mass in the adjacent school building’s gymnasium. Holy Rosary’s congregation began declining after that.
Process
In August 2019, then-Archbishop J. Peter Sartain said the building would be demolished.
In 2020, new Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne declared that Our Lady of the Holy Rosary parish was not viable. It was later merged into what would become Pope St. John XXIII Parish. Its bilingual school was relocated to St. Martin of Tours in Fife that same year.
This week, the archdiocese said that months of discussion by the parish’s finance and pastoral councils made their recommendation to Father Tuan Nguyen who then made his recommendation to Etienne.
Etienne issued a decree which will relegate the building to “profane but not sordid use” on June 15. That means that the building may no longer be used as a Catholic worship space.
“This decision by your parish leadership teams was not easy, especially with the mounting public pressure,” Etienne wrote to Pope St. John XXIII parishioners on Sunday.
Opposition
“We’re going to be gearing right up again,” Carp said Wednesday. “Like we were in the fall of 2019.”
Save Tacoma’s Landmark Church is not giving up its fight and is directly opposing Etienne, Carp said.
“Our position on this is unchanged,” Carp told the News Tribune Wednesday. “That church belongs legally to the archdiocese, but spiritually, morally, belongs to the Catholic community of Tacoma and more broadly, the people of Tacoma.”
Carp said the group has $300,000 in cash donations and pledges of $1.7 million more. His group alleges that the archdiocese has inflated the estimated costs to repair the building.
One former parish member, who wished to remain anonymous, said many of the Holy Rosary parish members declined to join the new parish.
“It has caused some people to have left the church, they’ve been so disgusted,” Carp said.
To raze or not to
raze?
In 2019, the archdiocese said the building needed $2.5 million in repairs in order to occupy it and a total of $18 million to completely renovate it.
Carp disputes these figures as highly inflated.
“This whole effort, I believe, is a money grab,” Carp said. “That real estate has great views of Commencement Bay. You could sell that for a lot of money.”
Only the archdiocese can demolish the building, a virtual necessity if it wants to sell the property at market value. If it’s sold with the buildings intact, historic preservation laws kick in.
Archdiocese spokesperson Helen McClenahan said the archdiocese has not yet made a decision if the property will be sold with the buildings intact or demolished. The intent, she said, was to sell the “full property” but planning could not happen until Etienne’s decree was issued. She also could not provide a timeline for a sale.
“It is a sad moment when a beautiful church building comes to an end,” Etienne said.
‘A great tragedy’
Former Tacoma mayor Bill Baarsma said Thursday that the destruction of Holy Rosary would be “one more sad chapter for the city of Tacoma.”
The building, he said, should be number one on the list of buildings marked for historic preservation.
“It’s part of Tacoma’s history,” he said. “It’s a beautiful building.”
Baarsma called the archdiocese’s attitude toward the city troubling.
“We’re just kind of a second city,” he said. “(The archdiocese is) not really too concerned about the feelings of the people here. Everything seems kind of Seattle centric.”
Appeal
“Our appeal is getting pulled together right now,” Carp said. “And it will be on the Archbishop’s desk this week. And if he rejects it, we are retaining the services of a Canon lawyer in Rome, as well as consulting civil attorneys about options.”
The group isn’t the only Tacoma Catholic church seeking Canon law help in Rome. A group of parishioners from the now closed St. Rita of Cascia on Tacoma’s Hilltop has hired an Italian Canon lawyer to appeal that parish’s merger into Pope St. John XXIII Parish.
“Archbishop Etienne is good for Canon lawyers’ bottom line, I guess,” Carp said.
Etienne was the subject of an opinion piece in the Seattle Times after the Archdiocese spent $2.4 million to purchase a residence for him in the city.
City support
In 2019, the city supported the effort to save the church.
Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards told supporters in 2019, “I’m standing with you to make sure this church goes absolutely nowhere.”
“It’s truly an iconic building in the city of Tacoma,” historic preservation officer Reuben McKnight said at the time.
The building is on the city’s register of historic landmarks and cannot be demolished without the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, McKnight said in 2019. That process includes a public hearing.
As of Thursday, Tacoma had not received applications for permits relating to Holy Rosary Church, McKnight said in a statement to the News Tribune.
“The demolition review process in the Tacoma Municipal Code has not changed; however, there are unique considerations around the regulation of churches for historic preservation purposes,” he said. “In general, the right of a religious organization to control and dispose of its property is considered part of the free exercise of religion guaranteed under both the United States and Washington state constitutions.”
In case a permit application is received, the city is now reviewing the legal status of churches and historic requirements, McKnight added.
Baarsma likens the situation to that of Union Station, which nearly faced the wrecking ball until it was saved at the last minute in the 1980s. Today, that Beaux-Arts style domed building is a federal courthouse and the crown jewel of downtown Tacoma.
“It’s an important part of our city, not only for the Roman Catholics, but for others who’ve admired the building, who’ve known people who have been members of that church, married at that church,” Baarsma said. “It transcends Catholicism to be a much broader issue.”