For Long Island Catholics, Bishop Barres' tenure a work in progress

Bishop John Barres took over the Diocese of Rockville Centre in 2017 with great hopes: He wanted to reach out to Latino immigrants, boost Mass attendance and rescue a declining Catholic school system.

Some of those plans were derailed by major obstacles, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down churches for months, and the clergy sex abuse scandal prompted the diocese to declare bankruptcy. Ailing finances forced him to sell properties, including the diocesan headquarters.

Six years after his arrival, Barres is receiving mixed reviews among Catholics as he navigates the bankruptcy, tries to keep the schools open, pushes to fill the pews again, and looks for new recruits to the priesthood.

For some, he is a courageous, energetic and insightful leader who, between the pandemic and the bankruptcy, has weathered arguably the worst crises in the history of one of the nation’s largest Catholic dioceses. Founded in 1957, the Rockville Centre diocese is home to 1.4 million Catholics — nearly half the population of Long Island.

“I think he’s about the best bishop we’ve ever had,” said Frank Russo, 80, a longtime parishioner in Port Washington who for years led the American Family Association of New York, a conservative group that promotes stances such as pro-life, traditional marriage and school choice. “He’s very consistent with church teachings that have been going on for centuries."

Elizabeth Boylan, an active parishioner at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, said Barres had overcome great barriers.

“Given that he inherited incredible challenges — the bankruptcy, the closing of Catholic schools — I think that he has really forged ahead,” she said. “He’s been strong. He’s been courageous.”

Other Catholics have a less favorable view of the bishop. They contend Barres, 62, has turned his back on survivors of the sex abuse scandal as negotiations in bankruptcy court pass the 2½-year mark. The diocese could have settled the cases long ago, they said, but instead has let the negotiations drag on, with millions of dollars that could have gone to survivors being paid to attorneys instead.

They described the bishop as an isolated intellectual who launches forays into what they consider obscure topics, such as defending the church’s prohibition against artificial birth control. That has sometimes made him seem out of touch with the faithful in the pews, they said.

The promise of Barres' early days when he arrived from the Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to take over Rockville Centre has been squandered, in the minds of critics.

"I am disheartened by the increasing number of disillusioned Catholics who continue to disaffiliate from the church, not because they lack faith, but because they lack a spiritual connection to a hierarchy so removed from the lives of the laity,” said Pat McDonough, a decadeslong Catholic educator who lives in Long Beach.

“Bishop Barres seems disengaged from the deepest needs of Long Island Catholics,” she said. “His homilies, his letters and his leadership style reflect a disconnect from what Catholics are desperately seeking: an authentic spiritual leadership that models the humble, healing life of Christ.”

The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on Barres’ plans, according to some Catholics, but was something he could do little about.

“The whole COVID thing I’m sure derailed a lot or delayed a lot of what he was hoping to do,” said Rick Hinshaw, former editor of The Long Island Catholic, a weekly newspaper the diocese had published since 1962 but shut down in 2012 to save money. Its monthly successor, The Long Island Catholic magazine and a Spanish version called Fe Fuerza Vida, closed in August 2021.

Barres declined to be interviewed by Newsday.

One of his biggest challenges has been the lingering impact of the church sex abuse scandal that broke two decades ago. In October 2020, he declared bankruptcy for the diocese as it faced potentially millions of dollars in settlements — and financial ruin — from about 600 pending cases.

The cases stemmed from New York’s Child Victims Act. Starting in August 2019, the law opened a two-year window for people to file lawsuits regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse took place. Some cases dated to 1957.

Multiple lawsuits had been filed by the fall of 2020, and the coronavirus pandemic was exacting a steep financial toll on the diocese. Annual revenue dropped by 40%, church officials said that October, due to decreased offertory collections at Sunday Masses, which had suspended in-person attendance.

Barres responded with the bankruptcy declaration, the sale of church properties — including the five-story headquarters in March 2021 for $5.2 million — and cutting diocesan staff.

At the Rockville Centre headquarters, 10% of staff already had been laid off in August 2020, saving $5 million a year, church officials said. Previous personnel cuts in October 2019 had reduced expenses by $3.5 million.

But 2½ years into bankruptcy, a settlement of the sex abuse lawsuits does not appear imminent, said attorneys for alleged survivors, one of whom heaped scathing criticism on the bishop.

“He’s had every opportunity to resolve the situation with the sex abuse survivors and yet he’s done completely the opposite,” said Richard Tollner, who alleges he was sexually abused by a priest in the 1970s when he was a high school student at St. Pius X preparatory seminary in Uniondale. “This man has done everything in his power to fight back against the survivors.”

The diocese has said it is doing what it can to eventually compensate survivors while also trying to ensure the church can continue its mission, including offering Masses, religious education classes and social ministry programs.

Barres, at the time of the bankruptcy, said it “offers the only way to ensure a fair and equitable outcome for everyone involved, including abuse survivors whose compensation settlements will be resolved by the courts."

It's unfair to judge Barres, said John Picciano, a longtime parishioner from Farmingdale, describing the bishop as a “fine, good, talented man.” 

Barres “was thrown, after the fact, into a raging firestorm of a national priest sex abuse scandal,” Picciano said.

“I refuse to blame the bishop for a scandal not of his own making. I blame those predecessors who ignored the warning signs for decades,” Picciano said. “I fault those who sent him here, almost like a lamb to the slaughter … hoping he could somehow stop the monetary bleeding.”

Latino outreach

When Barres arrived, immigrants — especially Latinos — were clearly on his radar.

Early in his tenure, the bishop announced he wanted to prioritize outreach to Latinos. With church participation dropping nationwide along with vocations, many saw the expanding Latino population as a key to growth.

With that in mind, Barres, who speaks Spanish, moved quickly. Three months after his arrival, in April 2017, he offered the funeral Mass in East Patchogue for a 16-year-old killed in a quadruple murder by MS-13 street gang members.

By some accounts, his aspirations have fallen short.

Richard Koubek, an advocate for immigrants who was impressed with Barres’ initial moves, noted the diocese long has had a large immigrant services department run through Catholic Charities. But Barres has provided timid leadership on immigration issues, Koubek said.

As an example, Koubek pointed to stepped-up deportations of people in the U.S. illegally by the Trump administration in 2019 in a series of roundups, including on Long Island, that unsettled many area Latino families.

“There was a terrible climate of fear on Long Island among immigrants and within the immigrant community,” Koubek said. “The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke out, and other denominations spoke out, but [Barres] was silent.

“It really upset me that there wasn’t a strong condemnation of that cruelty,” Koubek added.

In stark contrast, Koubek added, Bishop Lawrence Provenzano of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has been outspoken on immigration, reparations to descendants of enslaved people, and other hot-button topics.

“The difference is Bishop Provenzano is willing to be a prophetic voice and to say what needs saying even if it is at risk to his ecclesiastical structure and to his person,” Koubek said.

“He’s willing to proclaim the Gospel clearly … even when lawyers don’t want him to,” Koubek said.

Barres may not have been highly outspoken on controversial issues, others concede, but he has been pastorally present to the Latino community.

“From my perspective, he is a great bishop,” said Manolo Rodriguez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a trustee at Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church in Freeport.

“In the Latin community, he is well known," Rodriguez said. "He’s well, well respected."

Barres, whose Spanish, observers said, is improving, frequently celebrates Spanish Masses throughout Long Island and is particularly good at connecting with Latino teenagers and young adults, Rodriguez said. 

Manuel Ramos, a Catholic deacon and former head of Hispanic ministries for the diocese, said Barres has made several big moves to strengthen ties with Latinos.

In December 2019, he appointed the Rev. Luis Miguel Romero Fernandez head of Hispanic ministries for the diocese. Not long after that, Pope Francis elevated Romero to auxiliary bishop, making him the first bishop in the diocese to head the Hispanic ministry.

It “was really a big step and a great step,” Ramos said. Before Romero’s arrival, “The position didn’t have teeth. With Bishop Romero the position does have teeth because he’s a bishop.”

Hinshaw said that if Barres was hesitant to take a strong stand on some controversial issues like immigration, it may be a result of the diocese’s financial woes and his need to focus on internal church matters.

“He’s really been, I think, under the gun with a lot of fiscal issues,” Hinshaw said.

'Warm and engaging'

While opinions among Long Island Catholics about Barres on the big issues are divided, the view of him on a personal level generally is not. He is warm, personable and engaging, many said.

“He’s very pastoral,” Koubek said. “The few times I’ve seen him, he’s very kind, and warm, and engaging.”

Ramos noted that Barres typically arrives at Masses early, goes around greeting parishioners, and stays late to chat and let them take photographs of him.

“He’s very good working the crowds,” Ramos said. “He’s very patient. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get out.”

The Rev. Christopher Nowak, pastor of Holy Redeemer in Freeport, said Barres — who played basketball at Princeton — continued to maintain his trademark breakneck schedule, rising around 4 a.m. to start a busy day of activities.

“He’s like an Energizer bunny,” Nowak said. One Sunday, Barres celebrated five Masses, including two in Spanish at Holy Redeemer, Nowak said.

For all his energy and pastoral touch, some of Barres’ priorities seem off-key, according to Koubek and others. In 2018, Barres wrote a 16-page pastoral letter defending Pope Pius VI’s 1968 encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae. The pope's landmark letter reaffirmed the church’s prohibition against artificial birth control, even though a vast majority of Catholics have disregarded it.

“The positions he takes are rather removed and abstract, or they attempt connection with odd things, like spending a lot of time on the 1969 Mets victory when immigrants are being deported,” Koubek said. “It was rather jarring.”

Barres had delivered a series of videotaped spiritual and inspirational messages, using the 50th anniversary of the Mets' 1969 World Series victory and his childhood memories of some of the players to make his points. They aired on the diocesan-run Catholic Faith Network.

Some Catholics appreciated those messages and what they consider Barres’s creative approach on social media, like what he did with the Mets' video blogs. 

“Bishop Barres is an exceptional communicator,” said Thomas Lederer, a Hauppauge resident who earned a master’s degree in theology at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Lloyd Harbor. 

“His homilies are educational, with personal insights and experience. His writings may cajole but are never dogmatic,” Lederer said. “You won’t hear him say that something ‘is what it is’ because that’s the way it’s always been.”

He added that the Mets "were such underdogs that the victory was portrayed by many as being miraculous … Bishop Barres cleverly used the Mets' World Series win as encouragement for never giving up, to always strive toward what may seem impossible."

Leaving his mark

In the region’s Catholic schools, many agree Barres is leaving his mark.

Several years ago, the Catholic grammar school system was on “life support,” with permanent closings announced regularly, recalled Brother Thomas Cleary, president of Chaminade High School, a respected all-boys Catholic school in Mineola.

To save the system, Barres created the Morning Star Initiative and appointed Cleary and the Marianist Brothers to oversee a revitalization.

When the initiative was unveiled in January 2020, the number of students in the system had plummeted by more than half in two decades: from 25,414 to 11,533. The number of schools had fallen from 53 to 39, with the latest closing announced that same week. In the 1960s, there were 92 schools.

Barres “recognized that our Catholic grade schools needed to be strengthened … and then made a bold decision to do something about it,” Cleary said.

The pandemic led to the unexpected demise of five more schools over the next year as the economic shutdown cost parents wages they would have used for tuition, church officials said.

Since then, though, the system has shown signs of stabilization and even growth in some cases, Cleary said.

A new dual-language school, Our Lady of Guadalupe, with campuses in Central Islip and Deer Park, saw enrollment jump 30% this academic year, its second year in operation.

No schools have closed since June 2021, though the diocese declined to provide current enrollment numbers.

“It is moving in the right direction for sure,” Cleary said.

Encouraging signs

In February 2018, the bishop said he wanted by January 2022 to see a 10% increase in the number of people attending Sunday Mass. 

The pandemic upended those hopes, but Boylan said she saw the numbers increasing at churches such as her home parish of St. Agnes.

Barres also said in February 2018 that he wanted to double the number of seminarians in the diocese from 30 to 60. The diocese did not provide the current number of seminarians or figures on Mass attendance.

As Barres enters the post-pandemic era and continues to wrestle with the bankruptcy, he faces more major challenges.

Hinshaw believes the bishop will have to look seriously at consolidating or combining neighboring parishes as the number of congregants and priests shrink.

Boylan said she was hopeful Barres could meet the challenges.

“I think he has his youth on his side,” she said. “You need a lot of energy to run this diocese.”