Michael Moynihan: Time to use churches to shelter those who are living on a prayer
St Peter and Paul’s off Paul Street. Cork. The church grew out of a small chapel on Carey’s Lane that originally served the needs of the faithful in the immediate area, but early in the nineteenth century it was clearly getting too crowded.
Sunday and a stroll around the city. In the words of one of my research assistants, the vibe is good.
On the stroll last weekend, though, I made a particular note as we wandered off Patrick Street at one stage. Later we wound our way along Washington Street, and eventually down North Main Street, where we had a similar experience.
Specifically, the size of St Peter and Paul’s off Paul Street first, and then St Augustine’s on Washington Street, before eventually passing St Francis’ on Liberty Street. Huge churches, either dominating the landscape overtly in the case of St Augustine’s, or hidden by some smaller buildings alongside before suddenly looming out and above, like St Peter and Paul’s.
That’s not even mentioning the Holy Trinity, towering over the South Channel nearby — or a couple of others which are within touching distance of the very centre of the city. St Mary’s, towering over the North Channel, or St Patrick’s further east, which can almost tower over the North Channel.
(Or the full river, depending on the angle, but you get my meaning.)
That’s a lot of church for a small sliver of Cork, particularly when you consider the residential population they’re serving. Granted, St Mary’s and St Patrick’s draw on constituencies which might still nominally produce plenty of massgoers, but the others? Despite noises of encouragement about getting people to live in the city, are there enough residents between the two channels of the Lee to keep so many large churches open?
Those churches are interesting to someone tracking the development of the city, of course, because they mark distinct stages in that development.
Peter and Paul’s, for instance, grew out of a small chapel on Carey’s Lane that originally served the needs of the faithful in the immediate area, but early in the nineteenth century it was clearly getting too crowded.
The development of Peter and Paul’s was a long and difficult process, but when it was opened in 1866 “ ...early in the day the church was filled to its 1,500 capacity, double the number which used to fill the Carey’s Lane chapel of old. Huge crowds gathered in the street to witness the opening of a church which had been almost forty years in the making.”
(I quote here and elsewhere from the superb by Antoin O’Callaghan, the definitive work on this topic.)
Clearly, the inner island of the city was so populous in the nineteenth century that it needed a huge church to accommodate the crowds going to mass — and more churches along with it, given the number which were built or expanded all over Cork in that century.
But the demographics of the city changed significantly in the twentieth century, and there was a distinct movement of people outward — they left the centre of the city to settle in what were then distant places: Farranree, Gurranabraher and Ballyphehane.
With people being relocated to those suburbs, Bishop of Cork Connie Lucey came up with the idea of a series of churches described in this newspaper at the time as “designed to meet the urgent requirements of the areas mentioned and to cater for the thousands of citizens who in recent years have been transplanted from the heart of the city into the newly developed suburban areas.”
The ‘rosary churches’ were duly built throughout the fifties in what were then new suburbs. Clearly, there was a boom in ecclesiastical building and those churches were soon thronged with newcomers to those areas, but it leads us to an inevitable contemporary question.
What about the enormous churches which were left behind in the centre of the city? Given the decline in attendance at mass across the board, what role is played by those inner-city churches now?
Looking at other traditionally Catholic countries, you can find a striking variety in the uses found for decommissioned churches. Recently the Associated Press reported on developments in Mechelen, a town of 85,000 north of Brussels regarded as the Roman Catholic centre of that country. And home to over twenty churches.
Mechelen Mayor Bart Somers told the AP: “In my city, we have a brewery in a church, we have a hotel in a church, we have a cultural centre in a church, we have a library in a church. So, we have a lot of new destinations for the churches.”
Somers is involved in repurposing about 350 churches spread across Belgium, such as the Martin’s Patershof hotel in Mechelen.
Built in 1863, it was converted into a hotel in 2009, retaining the ornate exterior — and many interior features such as the altar adorning the dining room, or the church arches in the bedrooms.
Or consider the former Saint-Antoine de Padoue church in Brussels. Four climbers got together and converted this into the Maniak Padoue climbing club, with hand-and footholds on the wall alongside the stained-glass windows.
Too extreme? Perhaps. A climbing club in the Holy Trinity certainly sounds like a bridge too far.
But there are lessons to be learned nearer home also. It’s estimated that over 2,000 Christian churches of various denominations have closed in Britain over the course of the past decade, but that doesn't mean they’ve been lost to communities. The Guardian reported recently that the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill, London has a homeless shelter, youth club, a children’s dance centre, hosts a lecture series, a tearoom, and a design fair. Not to mention a real ale brewery (between this and Mechelen, what is it with breweries in churches?).
Whatever about brewing a fruity IPA or setting up a luxury king suite in one of the great cathedrals now largely empty in the centre of Cork, is repurposing those spaces as homeless shelters a la Primrose Hill not a reasonable suggestion?
We have never had more people living on our streets than we do now, and the services which aim to help those people are at bursting point.
We learned last month in these pages that the Cork Simon Community, to take one example, saw an increase of one-third in the demand for its services — almost 1,400 people turned to Simon last year for help.
As its chief executive, Dermot Kavanagh, pointed out, even employment is no longer a guarantee of accommodation: “A few years ago, we put a lot of effort into employment, education, and training courses, and that used to be a pathway out of homelessness. That’s no longer a guarantee. Rents are absolutely shocking.”
There’s a widespread acceptance that more affordable and social housing offers a long-term solution to homelessness, but there is also an immediate, pressing need for accommodation.
The weather has been unseasonably mild in recent weeks but winter is right on our doorstep. When there are vast empty spaces available to shelter people right in the middle of the city can we really say we are doing everything to combat homelessness?
