‌Seek the City to Come One Year Later: A Few Observations

The Archdiocese of Baltimore concluded its “Seek the City to Come” plan for consolidation of churches in Baltimore and surrounding areas at the end of 2024. One year later, it is unknown if the Archdiocese has assessed the aftermath of such a massive contraction of the Catholic Church’s footprint here in Baltimore. It would be good to know, for example, if the newly formed parishes at “seated” churches have experienced an increase in attendance equal to the number of those displaced from closed churches. Overall, it is impossible to determine exactly since not all parishes are reporting attendance in their weekly bulletins. What we CAN definitively see is a significant drop in donations to the Annual Appeal, the source of funds for the “ministries” AoB seeks to expand. In addition to reviewing attendance and donations, we also find it interesting to perform a retrospective analysis of the Seek the City map drawn by the Archdiocese and to re-examine some of the Catholic Review articles covering the project.

As to the issue of attendance, we will focus on our own “seated” parish, Our Lady of Hope, which absorbed Sacred Heart of Mary, St. Rita and St. Luke. Total average attendance for all four churches combined, pre-consolidation, was 1,069. A review of 12 recent bulletins published by Our Lady of Hope indicates an average attendance of 827, a 22.6% drop from what would be expected. It is unknown if these missing 242 persons have gone to other churches, or just stopped going altogether. There has been no outreach to find these folks, the majority of whom are probably elderly. This lack of follow-up is consistent with the Archdiocese’s dismissive view of elderly parishioners. Decrees of closure specifically cited advanced age of a church’s congregation as reason for closure, looking at “over 65” first. If that didn’t yield number high enough to justify closure, they used “over 55” to get the percentage they were looking for.

Looking at the drop in attendance at this particular parish together with the 25.7% overall decline in the Annual Appeal (see Appendix A - Spreadsheet), it can logically be deduced that folks all across the Baltimore area have indeed fallen through the cracks. This is happening contrary to what Archbishop Lori had earlier stated, “The whole orientation of Seek the City is toward the creation of parishes that are well positioned and well equipped to evangelize neighborhoods [emphasis added] and to really gather the people in those neighborhoods, especially the unchurched, around the table of the Lord.” (“The Final Plan,” Catholic Review, June 2024) How is this happening if these parishes are not even keeping the actual churchgoers they had? Or maybe the “unchurched” are now the priority. But how does evangelization occur, for instance, when St. Luke, the only Catholic church in the Sparrows Point/Edgemere peninsula is shuttered and sold….to a different Christian faith? That particular “neighborhood” is apparently expendable. St. Rita, a worship site, experienced a fire in July, 2025 yet nothing is in place to repair the church with insurance proceeds or to designate a worship site at either St. Luke (since sold) or Sacred Heart of Mary, leaving the entire expanse of the Eastern region with only a single church. The entire Essex/Middle River region is also left with ONE church.

Looking at the map, it’s plain to see that the catchment zone of “Seek the City” oddly spread miles and miles to the east, and only the east, encompassing the waterfront suburbs with ironically low church density. These areas are not even particularly near the “City” that was supposedly being sought. Neighborhoods that once had Catholic Churches to walk to are now essentially Catholic deserts.

As indicated previously, one way to gauge how well Seek the City changes are being accepted is to observe the change in donations to the Annual Appeal from 2024 to 2025. Although the overall decline is 25.7%, it is the consolidated parishes that have posted the most extreme drops (Catholic Review, Dec. 2024 & 2025). Of particular note:

St. Leo/St. Vincent de Paul	-84.8%
New All Saints	-78.7%
St. Matthew	-77.6%
Our Lady of Hope	-56.8%

Even if the decline in donations does not perfectly equate to decline in attendance, at a minimum it indicates dampened enthusiasm for the Archdiocese’s stated intent to expand ministries rather than expend funds on maintenance of local churches. Geri Royale Byrd, director of Seek the City to Come, said as much, “You’re talking about going from maintenance to mission.” (CR, “The Final Plan, May 2024). In the same article, Archbishop Lori expressed hope that the initiative [closure of churches] would, among other aims, foster, “….a sense of shared ministry, shared concern for our city and its environs, shared concerns for those who live there and who are in need of the Lord and the faith.” He mentions “faith,” yet the article continues with this explanatory narrative: “That includes new forms of partnership with Catholic Charities, Catholic education and Catholic health care organizations, among others, especially those supported by the Annual Appeal for Catholic Ministries [emphasis added]” which is down by over $280K as it turns out. Furthermore, the ministries described are mostly of the temporal sort rather than spiritual.

It is not unexpected that people feel disillusioned and alienated, left behind, by “Seek the City.” They supported their churches and were essentially told that their displaced souls could be sacrificed to the greater good of “ministries.” For sure, temporal needs are real and need to be addressed, but how much are faith and the faithful being neglected in pursuit of expanding the Catholic Church more as an NGO than a religious organization? For example, though AoB claims otherwise, “Catholic education” and “evangelization” do not seem priorities when so many empty area Catholic schools have been summarily disregarded in the “plan.” School buildings are either being sold or rented out to government programs such as AmeriCorps, Head Start and Charter schools, all secular. Again, in what form is this purported goal to “evangelize neighborhoods” manifesting?

AoB’s official answer to this question just appeared in the February, 2026 edition of the Catholic Review. In the article, “Accompaniment and Engagement, Institute for Evangelization marks five years,” author Christopher Gunty touts the program’s success in Westminster and Anne Arundel County. Regarding Baltimore, the report states, “[Director Herrera] said the institute also hopes to help parishes affected by the Seek the City to Come initiative assess progress and plan strategically.” “Hopes to,” when? Certainly not in a timely manner, if at all. Fallout, literally a falling out of souls, from Seek the City can be easily ignored by AoB—the reduction is miniscule compared to the ten of millions of dollars the Archdiocese stands to reap from the sale of dozens of properties and concentration on wealthier exurbs. This is an efficiency model upon which businesses and NGOs operate. It is one that Christ warned of in Mark 8:36. i.e., “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his life (often translated as “soul’),” part of which was, ironically, written above the altar at St. Elizabeth of Hungary, recently closed.

We continue our review by taking a fresh look at the map drawn and utilized by Seek the City to “carve in” areas of consideration and, as it turns out, “carve out,” other areas. Churches in the latter areas, were, fortunately spared the stress of the years-long process, but there are inconsistencies. Some inside the area were not included in the plan and Immaculate Conception was outside the map but closed anyway. A few points worth noting:

The catchment area of “Seek the City” reveals a very intentional “carved out” shape instead of something more expected, like a certain radius from the City center, a definite boundary such as the City/County line, or the Baltimore Beltway. Instead, we are presented with something approximating gerrymandered political districts. We see thirteen parishes very close in  (See SHMCC interactive GIS Map), some even within the map that were not included in the plan. They are:

While ten of these close-in churches were spared entirely, it’s plain to see those in the eastern areas were inordinately targeted, as posited earlier.

In addition to the retrospective look at the map, it’s worth re-examining some of the numbers reported by the Catholic Review. In “The Final Plan,” (CR June, 2024), Christopher Gunty reports, “Currently in Baltimore City and some nearby areas of Baltimore County that were part of the project, 61 parishes at 59 worship sites serve approximately 5,000 Catholics.” Gunty does not cite his source on this number of “5,000,” which makes no logical sense since later on, in the very same article, he states, “Archbishop Lori estimates that the archdiocese has heard some 6,000 voices in the process.” His Excellency would not be hearing from 6,000 voices if the plan only covers 5,000 Catholics. The actual number of Catholics impacted by the project is well over 12,000 from the Archdiocese’s own data published in booklets called “Toolkits” provided to each parish during the project. This number, 12,000, represents the average number of attendance in the aggregate at 61 parishes, and it underestimates the number of Catholics actually being served by a parish. Each parish has a registry which is (unfortunately) much greater than the number of attendees; a registry of persons whose attendance and participation in their neighborhood parish is more irregular, but who exist nonetheless. By CR’s incorrect reporting of the number of “5,000” it surely makes the case that 61 churches are far too many to serve such a small number. It’s an erroneous number and will make anything more than 5,000, from this point on, look like an increase, where the baseline should be 12,000, perhaps even twice that number. If the current attendance numbers from Our Lady of Hope can be extrapolated across the plan, we’re looking at a loss of 2,727 persons or a total of 9,341 persons still attending. The Catholic Review could potentially report that total as an 86.8% increase in attendance. In actuality, we are in the throes of a significant, likely permanent loss of souls that the AoB “hopes” to address, when it gets around to it.

		‌Same $$	Increase $$	Decrease $$
ARCHDIOCESE OF BALTIMORE APPEAL 2024-2025 (Appendix A)
Church	2024 Church Amount	2025 Consolidate Church	2025 Consolidate Church Amount	Delta Amount	% Change
Our Lady of Hope	12,111	Our Lady Of Hope	23,727
Sacred Heart of Mary	26,375
St. Luke	12,445
St. Rita	3,955
Total Amount	54,886		23,727	-31,159	-56.80%
Basilica of the Assumption	56,117	Basilica of the Assumption	72,760
Corpus Christi	12,904
Total	69,021		72,760	3,739	5.40%
St. Bernardine	19,452	St. Bernardine	19,540
St. Peter Claver	9,897
St. Edward	6,155
St. Gregory the Great	200
St. Pius	475
Total	36,179		19,540	-16,639	-46.00%
St. Alphonsus	14,493	St. Alphonsus	20,478
Total	14,493		20,478	5,985	41.30%
New All Saints	4,590	New All Saints	3,627
St. Cecelia	5,790
Immaculate Conception	6,645
Total	17,025		3,627	-13,398	-78.70%

St. Veronica	2,060	St. Veronica	1,075
Total	2,060		1,075	-985	-47.80%
Our Lady of Victory	11,450	Our Lady of Victory	18,963
St. Joseph's Monastery	4,810
Transfiguraton	2,750
St. Benedict	690
Total	19,700		18,963	-737	-3.70%
St. Ambrose	3,375	St. Ambrose	3,373
Total	3,375		3,373	-2	0%
St. Agnes	35,815	St. Agnes	40,893
St. William of York	14,140
Total	49,955		40,893	-9,062	-18.10%
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen	157,903	Cathedral of Mary Our Queen	161,567
Shrine of the Sacred Heart	11,365
St. Pius X	22,080
St. Thomas Aquinas	26,190
St. Mary of the Assumption	6,155
Total	223,693		161,567	-62,126	-27.80%
Ss. Philip and James	18,300	Ss. Philips and James	31,560
Total	18,300		31,560	13,260	72.40%
St. Athanasius	18,159	St. Athanasius	19,086
St. Rose of Lima	11,190
Total	29,349		19,086	-10,263	-35.00%
Catholic Community of South Baltimore	81,763	Catholic Community of South Ba	85,232
Total	81,763		85,232	3,469	4.20%

St. Casimir	25,930	St. Casimir	25,028
Total	25,930		25,028	-902	-3.50%
St. Matthew	8,811	St. Matthew	19,005
St. Francis of Assisi	8,545
St. Dominic	5,365
Shrine of the Little Flower	4,934
St. Anthony of Padua	50,537
Most Precious Blood	1,195
Blessed Sacrament	5,340
Total	84,727		19,005	-65,722	-77.60%
Our Lady of Fatima	6,390	Our Lady of Fatima	9,908
Our Lady of Pompei	1,600
Total	7,990		9,908	1,918	24.00%
Sacred Heart of Jesus	13,129	Sacred Heart of Jesus	16,174
Holy Rosary	13,974	Holy Rosary*	24,353
Total	27,103		40,527	13,424	49.50%
St. Leo	16,105	St. Leo	1,860
St. Vincent de Paul	89,780	St. Vincent de Paul*	14,636
St. Patrick	2,780
Total	108,665		16,496	-92,169	-84.80%
St. Francis Xavier	15,635	St. Francis Xavier	11,795
St. Ann	1,792
St. Wenceslaus	2,815
Total	20,242		11,795	-8,447	-41.70%
St. Ignatius	70,220	St. Ignatius	83,233
Total	70,220		83,233	13,013	18.50%
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel	14,919	Our Lady of Mt. Carmel	19,842

St. Clare	17,626
Total	32,545		19,842	-12,703	-39.00%
St. Michael the Archangel	17,363	St. Michael the Archangel	25,582
St. Clement Mary Hofbauer	12,309
Church of the Annunciation	6,990
Total	36,662		25,582	-11,080	-30.20%
Immaculate Heart of Mary	45,045	Immaculate Heart of Mary	56,980
St. Thomas More	11,835
Total	56,880		56,980	100	0%
Total	1,090,763		810,277	-280,486	-25.70%
Notes: 1) 3 of the 5 parishes with in green were NOT subjected to mergers.
Only Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima saw increases in Appeal donations