(LifeSiteNews) — The Archdiocese of Chicago is insisting on closing six Catholic schools this year despite parent protests and at least one formal request to keep open St. Hubert Catholic School, noting undiscussed possibilities to boost its finances.
After Cardinal Blase Cupich’s archdiocese announced it would be closing six schools due to alleged lack of financial sustainability, a group of parents, teachers and alumni from two of those schools, St. Hubert Catholic School and Our Lady of Humility School, gathered to protest outside Holy Name Cathedral on Sunday after Mass. “Catholic education is a ministry, not a line item,” read one woman’s protest sign.
The protesters, part of a St. Hubert Coalition, argue that the school’s closure is not necessary even on a financial basis. A Fiscal Year 2025 report shared with LifeSiteNews shows that the school could operate for more than five years at its current deficit and become cash-flow positive within two years with a modest 10 percent reduction in salary costs or an alternative source of income from new extracurriculars.
After protesting in front of Holy Name Cathedral, the demonstrators marched to the Archdiocese of Chicago office in the Gold Coast. The protest wrested a response from the archdiocese, the first issued since the advocacy group made its petition.
Hours after the march, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Catholic Schools said, “There are no plans to revisit those decisions,” which were made with “heavy hearts after months of discussions,” in a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times.
A spokesperson for the archdiocese said the schools’ deficits were too high and enrollment was too low to keep them open. Fundraising efforts were not enough to keep them afloat, the spokesperson added.
Michelle Flowers, a mother of four children attending St. Hubert and an alumna herself, said the closure was “deeply troubling.”
“This is the first we’ve heard from them. … Catholic schools are not meant to operate as balance sheets,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. “If the archdiocese isn’t even willing to come to the table, that represents an abandonment of a mission.”
After the closure of St. Hubert was announced, the coalition fighting to keep it open submitted to Cupich a Remonstratio — a request for consideration — listing important, relevant facts that were not considered when making the decision to close the school. More than 100 concerned parents, staff, parishioners, alumni, and students supported the petition.
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“What’s happening to our schools is reprehensible,” Laura Morrison, the canon lawyer behind the Remonstratio, told LifeSiteNews.
The archdiocese responded to the petition Thursday, affirming that they are not revoking the decision to close St. Hubert. They have not disputed or addressed the financial analysis presented to them.
Now the group is taking their request to the Vatican, Morrison said.
The petition to Cardinal Cupich requested “transparent information on the school’s financial position,” including the following:
- An alleged five-year plan that was shared with Cardinal Cupich on which to base this decision
- Why $500,000 was taken from a restricted fund for school infrastructure without consulting donors
- Why the parish did not pay a proportionate amount of money for their overall part of the debt
- Why all of a sudden our (expected) fundraising goal dropped from $302,500 to $168,990 to project a larger deficit
- Why parish administration did not pursue viable revenue generating opportunities like cheerleading and sports camps, bingo, grants for preschool, etc.
None of the above points had been discussed by the Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the archdiocese with administrators and parents, the Remonstratio notes. Moreover, the petition notes that a drop of 48 families from the school was caused by the removal of tuition discounts and tuition hikes, decisions that were made without consulting the school board.
St. Hubert alumna and mother Julie Chirinos added to ABC 7 Chicago that great leaps had already been made in just the first year of a three-year plan to reduce the deficit of St. Hubert, cutting its debt from half a million dollars to $140,000.
Given that an immediate closure of St. Hubert “would inflict serious and possibly irreparable harm on the right of minors to education” and “the faith journey of families concerned,” the coalition is requesting, in accordance with canon law, that the decree of closure be suspended.
The closure of St. Hubert, considered by the community to be a bastion of “strong faith formation” and “academic excellence” as the only Catholic school in District 54, would also “forc(e) a number of students to attend public schools.”
The petitioners highlighted the fact that the salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church, and St. Hubert’s closure could reasonably be expected to cause harm to this supreme end.
An alumnus of St. Hubert has set up a GoFundMe to help save the school, which has already raised more than $20,000 of its $500,000 goal — the deficit number cited by the archdiocese as the reason for the school’s closure.
The school closures in the Archdiocese of Chicago are part of a newly emerging larger pattern of Catholic school closures allegedly due to financial strain but without serious efforts to remedy school finances. In at least one recent case in the Archdiocese of Denver, a Catholic elementary school is being closed despite an admitted lack of a financial emergency.
Dr. Scott Elmer, interim superintendent for the Archdiocese of Denver, acknowledged in an interview with CBS Colorado that there is no pressing need to close the school, but rather that the decision was based on anticipated financial need. “Do you want to wait until you have to close the school because your funds have run dry, or do you want to make a proactive decision to appropriate those funds for something else?” he asked.
Graham Lapp, a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and fraud examiner (CFE), offered to LifeSiteNews in December a scathing analysis of what he sees to be the rationale behind at least a few such closures.
“In the past year, I have worked on several cases in which secular advisory firms persuaded bishops to sell parishes or schools that were otherwise sustainable. These firms essentially argued that the cash value of the land and buildings outweighed the evangelization taking place at these locations,” Lapp said.