The Deacon's Bench
The news comes from the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
The Vatican is investigating Bishop Richard Lennon’s closings of churches in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, according to a report in an Italian newspaper.
A spokesman for the diocese said Tuesday he would look into the account, but had no immediate comment.
The report Friday in the Italian newspaper La Stampa by veteran Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said the Vatican has decided to send “an apostolic visit, or rather, an investigation” to look into Lennon’s decisions on the closings.
Lennon, citing changes in Catholic demographics, a shortage of priests and dwindling Sunday cash collections, ordered the shuttering of 50 parishes, beginning in August 2009 and ending in June 2010.
Going from church to church each Sunday to say final Masses, Lennon, escorted by armed body guards, became a target for protestors and the subject of angry letters to Rome.
More than a dozen Cleveland-area churches appealed their closings to the Holy See and are still waiting for decisions from a Vatican panel called the Congregation for the Clergy.
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