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The Archdiocese of New York
Office of the Cardinal
Cardinal Timothy Dolan
488 Madison Ave, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10022

Your Eminence,

We approach you with deep concern and a sense of urgency about the future of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer on East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B in the East Village. The church has been closed and the regular mass schedule has been suspended. We have also learned that the Blessed Sacrament has been removed. We are aware of the fate of the many other churches in the diocese that have been similarly closed since 2014. We have been told that a reason for closing the church is a lack of priests to staff it. Nevertheless, the last pastor of Most Holy Redeemer was transferred to a suburban parish where he is now one of three priests in residence, suggesting, perhaps, a prejudice against inner-city parishes and in favor of wealthier suburban parishes. We have also been told that the building is in need of repair. But in 2015, Most Holy Redeemer parish was merged with Nativity parish; and in 2020, the Nativity property was sold for $40 million. We wonder why some of the proceeds of that sale were not earmarked to fund necessary repairs for Most Holy Redeemer.

While we understand that the decision to close a church is always difficult and not always avoidable, we believe that if Most Holy Redeemer were to cease to function as a church—or worse, if the property were sold and the church torn down— it would be a particularly lamentable loss to the faithful, to the neighborhood, and to the city. The fact that the secular Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation is circulating a petition to have the church landmarked—and has already received over 1,500 signatures—is proof that the loss of Most Holy Redeemer would be felt and mourned by non-Catholics and Catholics alike.

Most Holy Redeemer is a church of historic importance. Completed in 1852 and located in what was once called “Little Germany,” the church was often referred to as the “German Catholic Cathedral” of New York. It has a stunning marble-clad interior in the German Baroque and Romanesque Revival styles, featuring imported German stained-glass windows, an impressive vaulted ceiling in celestial blue, ornate columns, and beautiful side chapels. It boasts a 2,760-pipe Fenton organ, installed in 1911.

From its very beginning, Most Holy Redeemer was touched by sanctity. The church was consecrated by the Archbishop of New York, John Hughes, with a Pontifical Mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Philadelphia, St. John Neumann, the first male citizen of the United States who is a canonized saint.

Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity was the parish of the Servant of God and co-founder of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, who lived and died at Mary House on East 3rd Street. A shrine with a statue of the “Virgin of the Poor,” originally housed in the sold-and-demolished Nativity Church, was erected at Most Holy Redeemer in honor of Dorothy Day’s legacy.

The church is blessed with a reliquary chapel that contains an extraordinary 152 relics, including the entire remains of an early Christian martyr, St. Datian. The saint’s bones have reposed at Most Holy Redeemer since 1894. Over the years, many petitioners have reported cures wrought through the intercession of St. Datian and have left votive offerings at the shrine in gratitude. In addition to these relics, the remains of 85 Redemptorist priests and brothers are interred in the crypt below the church, bearing mute witness to the lives they spent serving not just the MHR parish community but other parishes as well, and even catechizing and ministering to the orphaned poor on then-Blackwell, now Roosevelt Island.

In the Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help there is an indulgenced icon, a copy of the original in Rome. In 1871, a papal indult granted a 300 days indulgence to all who devoutly pray before the icon. The image wears a crown of gold, set with diamonds and precious stones for which pious women of the congregation donated their jewelry.

Most importantly, however, Most Holy Redeemer—like all Catholic Churches—was built to house the Blessed Sacrament. Here, generations of Catholics have attended the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and received their Savior. It is a place where people can enter and encounter God. It is an oasis of peace in a busy city. It was built by the generosity of immigrants to serve immigrant populations. Though the immigrant population in the East Village has changed, their need has not. Nor has the need of many people outside the parish who visit the church and consider it a refuge; who come there to pray in an edifying, exceptionally beautiful environment that raises the mind and heart to God.

The people who built Most Holy Redeemer believed they were building something lasting: an enduring gift for the greater honor and glory of God and for the good of souls. The people who endowed windows, pews, chapels, the organ, believed they were leaving perpetual memorials to their deceased loved ones and a legacy for future generations. Now, just 172 years later, this house of God, this oasis, this legacy is in peril.

In the sermon for the dedication of Most Holy Redeemer, Bishop John McCloskey told the congregation: “God has blessed the fruit of your hands and the sweat of your brow...Show that there is within you the same faith, that the generosity burns in your bosoms, and that there is the same zeal in all your actions and in all your thoughts. Then let us rally around that altar and that sacrament.”

We, the undersigned, are answering Bishop McCloskey’s call. We urgently plead and pray that your Eminence will save this precious and truly irreplaceable house of God so that, decades from now, Catholics and non-Catholics alike will praise you for your good stewardship in preserving and passing on what you received thanks to the generosity and good stewardship of those who came before you; that people will be able to point to Most Holy Redeemer and say to their children, "Yes, this was almost lost to us, but wiser counsels prevailed.”

Respectfully yours in Christ, the Good Shepherd,