Landmark Tacoma church to be demolished and sold
TACOMA, Wash. - There's a renewed push to save the iconic Holy Rosary Church in Tacoma. Earlier this week the Archbishop Paul Etienne from the Archdiocese of Seattle filed his decree saying the church to be "relegated to profane but bot sordid use" allowing the land to be sold.
The historic building was built in 1920 and dedicated on November 21, 1921 as the parish of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
Joy Donohue, has been a part of the parish for as long as she can remember up until they day they closed it. She attended the bilingual school from kindergarten through eighth grade.
"It is a beacon of hope for everyone that sees it," Donohue said.
The church's steeple towers over the Tacoma Dome as thousands commute on I-5 daily. Jonathan Carp was one of those drivers after being relocated to the Evergreen state with military orders.
"It's beautiful, and just wondering 'whose church is that?' and finding out it was mine," Carp said. The father says his children grew up in the church.
"She [his daughter] was one of the most recent children to be baptized and Holy Rosary before the church closed and so it's very special to our family," Carp said. His two sons were also altar servers a family tradition.
"It's part of what makes Tacoma, Tacoma the big church by the freeway, everybody knows it and it would just be a tragedy for the whole city if it was lost," Carp said.
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The conversation started in 2018 when a part of the ceiling crumbled and fell into the choir loft on October 6. The building was closed for safety concerns.
"The initial figure given to us by the Archdiocese of Seattle was $2 million," Donohue said.
Save Tacoma's Landmark Church, a non-profit organization, was formed to help with repairs they raised nearly $2 million.
In May 2022, Archbishop Etienne issued a decree to merge three parishes in Tacoma – including Holy Rosary – effective in July. Religious leaders had an inspection that same year and said it would cost approximately $7 million to make the necessary repairs but would need an additional $10 million for seismic retrofitting to make the building safe for future use and other upgrades.
"I don't doubt that the member would continue to grow," Donohue said. She and Carp are both board members of the non-profit.
The decree say the costs to repair the Church are "too great for the parish to bear".
"All we've been asking for the last five years is a chance," Carp said. "Let us try, rescind the decree to tear down the church and say ‘if the money is raised the church will be saved’ and then let us fundraise on that, let us try to make it work."
For now parishioners are clinging to sacred memories hoping to stop Holy Rosary from becoming a pile of rubble.
"There is no part of me that can allow that to happen," Donohue said.
The nonprofit has appeared to the Vatican ensuring they know resources do exist to preserve Holy Rosary.
"We've appealed to higher diocesan powers and eventually sooner than later, we'll be awaiting a decision from Rome, from the Vatican regarding our church." Donohue said.
"We’re going to make sure its still there, we're going to win," Carp said.
FOX 13 reached out to the Archdioceses of Seattle who said "Ultimately, we discerned that we do not have the funds to pay for these significant repairs – or to maintain such a building. Nor do we have a need for this specific worship space when we have several other functioning locations that can accommodate more parishioners. This was not an easy decision. The group discussed the option of having a donor or a group fund the $18 million. We debated: Would it be most prudent to repair one church building serving a small community of the faithful when there are other pressing spiritual and social needs of the newly formed PSJ XXIII? Additionally, we discussed how there would not be enough priests within PSJ XXIII to provide services at Holy Rosary and how selling only a portion of the property did not make financial sense once all the numbers penciled out. Given the lack of financial and personnel resources, and the needs of the parish community, members of the Pastoral and Finance councils ultimately decided to recommend selling the entire Holy Rosary property."