About two dozen hands went up when the archbishop asked how many of the founding members were in the congregation to mark this final milestone for the Warren parish.
“I see that there have been 2,990 baptisms, 4,391 first Communions, 3,200 confirmations 1,649 marriages and 1,715 funerals among the countless graces that have come to this community and through it to our neighbors,” Archbishop Vigneron said, citing the statistics in that weekend’s parish bulletin.
St. Cletus Parish will, in official Church terms, be “suppressed” as of July 1, but many of its long-time parishioners will go right on attending Mass week-in and week-out at St. Cletus Church.
That’s because the church, at 26256 Ryan Road, will remain open — and retain its name — as the church of Our Lady of Grace (Vietnamese) Parish, the national or “personal” parish for Vietnamese Catholics.
The members of Our Lady of Grace, who had outgrown their old church in Eastpointe, have been sharing the St. Cletus property since last year. Now, it will be theirs.
But the terms of the official decrees affecting the closing of St. Cletus Parish and transferring the property call for the pastor of Our Lady of Grace to provide continuing pastoral care for St. Cletus parishioners who wish to remain.
The territory of the parish is being divided between St. Louise de Marillac Parish (north of the Walter P. Reuther Freeway, I-696), and St. Mark Parish (south of I-696).
Roger and Gloria Brideau, founding members of the parish, were there for the golden anniversary Mass just as they had been there for the first Mass. They said they intend to keep on coming to St. Cletus Church for the English-language Mass of Our Lady of Grace Parish.
The people of St. Cletus Parish, through their parish council, requested the closing of the parish through the Together in Faith process last year as they faced the prospect of a continuing decline in membership.
Roger Brideau remembers when the church was practically bursting at the seams.
“If you got to mass two minutes late, you had to stand in the back,” he recalled.
Gloria said St. Cletus had been a good parish in which to raise their family, and told how all of their children were baptized there and three of them were married there.
Fr. Fabian Slominski, who was pastor from 1983-90, said it had a good assignment for him.
“The people were the greatest here, and they had a very great love for their children. They were very close to the parish and the community here,” he said.
Fr. Sindy Eckert, administrator of St. Cletus for the past four years, put the new arrangement with Our Lady of Grace (Vietnamese) Parish this way: “We’re 50 years and counting, but we’re counting together now.”
While St. Cletus has been a smaller parish in terms of numbers than it once was, Fr. Eckert said it continued to be made up of “very good, very charitable people” right to the end.
Although officially retiring after the parish closing, he said he will stay on for several months to help ease the transition, then move to the Port Huron area.
Fr. Vincent Nguyen an Ninh, pastor of Our Lady of Grace, said he was honored that his parish would be the first of the 250 Vietnamese parishes nationwide to have non-Vietnamese members.
“And I applaud Fr. Sid Eckert for not being a closing-church pastor, but a continuing-church pastor by doing everything he could to keep St.Cletus open as a Catholic church for decades to come,” Fr. Nguyen continued.
The new arrangement will not only mean that St. Cletus parishioners will be able to attend “the church they built for the rest of their lives,” but also that he would attend to other pastoral matters such as visiting the sick and conducting funerals in English.
