St. Mary’s Parish is scheduled to reopen at 7 p.m. Aug. 15 — the feast day of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Rev. Dan Reed, who officially became pastor of the parish on Monday, announced the reopening of the parish in a letter to former parishioners this week.
St. Mary’s is one of 11 parishes in the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, including two in Akron, that won appeals to the Vatican to be reopened. The parishes were among 50 that were closed or merged between August 2009 and June 2010 by Bishop Richard Lennon as part of a reconfiguration plan to address a shortage of priests, shifting demographics and declining attendance and finances.
The other Akron parish that won an appeal — St. John the Baptist on Brown Street — reopened Sunday.
St. Mary’s had merged with St. Bernard Parish in downtown Akron to form St. Bernard-St. Mary Parish. The merged parish ran a school at the St. Mary site, 750 S. Main St., and used the St. Bernard site, 44 University Ave., for worship.
The two parishes will operate separately, sharing the pastor. The school will return to St. Mary’s.
The feast day selected by Reed for the reopening of St. Mary’s commemorates the death of Mary and her bodily assumption into Heaven. It is a holy day of obligation in the Roman Catholic Church.
After the Mass, registration forms will be available for families and individuals to register at the parish. The membership forms will also be available in the school cafeteria after the Sunday Mass on Aug. 19 and 26. Mass times have yet to be determined.
Volunteers will be in the church vestibule at St. Mary’s to help fill out the forms and collect them from 10 a.m. to noon on Aug. 20, 22 and 25 and 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 21 and 24.
For information, call 330-253-5364 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com.
