Congregants hope they're 'home free' after bishop backs down on Joliet parish closing

Bishop Ron Hicks, the top Catholic cleric in Will and DuPage counties, is backing away from efforts to close a historic Joliet parish following a stinging rebuke from the Vatican in August, according to a church publication.

As part of a larger restructuring effort impacting numerous Catholic parishes and schools in Hicks’ Diocese of Joliet, he decided earlier this year to eliminate the status of St. Joseph Parish as a standalone parish and fold its operations and members into a new parish centered at a different Joliet church building along with several other congregations.

Members of St. Joseph were upset by the decision, and petitioned the Vatican to overturn Hicks’ move.

That happened in August, when, in a rare move, an arm of the Vatican revoked the parish closing and questioned Hicks’ reasoning for his decision — which included finances, mass attendance and the “near disappearance of the Slovenian community.”

In part, Vatican officials found that St. Joseph “appears to more than sufficiently meet its financial obligations,” records show.

Founded in the late 1800s to serve Slovenians, records show the parish had more than $1 million in the bank and nearly 900 registered members — making the congregation much better off than many other parishes experiencing sagging mass attendance and donations in an era marked by increasing secularization, fewer priests and disgust over the decades-long clergy sex abuse crisis.

Hicks was allowed to appeal the reversal with the church’s bureaucracy but has chosen not to do so, according to the St. Joseph weekly bulletin dated Sunday.

“Bishop Hicks was given an option to file an appeal to a higher court in the Vatican, however, he has decided to honor the decision of the Dicastery for Clergy,” says the bulletin.

But Hicks plans “to move forward with the merger or amalgamation” of the other three parishes that initially had been grouped with St. Joseph, the bulletin says.

The Rev. John Hornicak, who has been overseeing St. Joseph as the parochial administrator, says what’s in the bulletin is accurate but deferred comment to Hicks’ office, which did not respond to questions Thursday or Friday.

“Based on what’s in the bulletin, that’s definitive proof in my opinion that the case has concluded,” says Brody Hale, an attorney who served as “canonical advisor” to the St. Joseph parishioners who fought their parish closing.

It will remain “as an independent parish, and that’s significant.”

Joliet resident and St. Joseph congregant Michael Vidmar, who appealed Hicks' closure decision to the Vatican with support from numerous parishioners, says "we did not get any notification directly" of Hicks' decision to back down.

But "we are grateful, thankful, prayers have been answered that we get to keep our Slovenian church and traditions," Vidmar says. "We're home free, it looks like."

An acolyte of Chicago’s top cleric, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Hicks has been the bishop of the Joliet diocese since 2020, when he was appointed by the pope. The diocese includes more than 500,000 Catholics and over 100 parishes in the south and west suburbs and downstate.