(LifeSiteNews) — The Islamic Community Center of Illinois (ICCI) is raising money to purchase the former Our Lady of Victory Church from the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The Muslim group’s plans to purchase the former church, if successful, would take on added significance and darkly ironic symbolism, given the former church’s name. Our Lady of Victory is a title that comes from the Battle of Lepanto, when Catholic forces defeated the Islamic Ottoman Empire through the power of the Holy Rosary.
The Islamic community center, which is already located inside a former church, plans on purchasing Our Lady of Victory to set up a high school. The ICCI anticipates the opening of the “the first Islamic High School on the North Side of Chicago” as “a long-awaited milestone for our community,” it stated on its fundraising page.
Our Lady of Victory, which was founded in 1906, held its last Mass and was shuttered in 2021 under Cardinal Blase Cupich as part of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s “Renew my Church” consolidation plan. At the time, the community filed an unsuccessful appeal to the Vatican to try to keep the church open.
Sacred statues have since been removed from the church, including a large statue of the Blessed Mother, which was moved to St. Pascal parish.
LifeSiteNews contacted the Archdiocese of Chicago to inquire whether it had entered into any discussions about the sale of Our Lady of Victory to the Islamic group. The communications office said that the archdiocese does not disclose the details of potential real estate transactions before sale.
Catholic author and podcaster Dr. Taylor Marshall decried the anticipated sale to Muslims as part of a larger pattern.
“Why do Catholic bishops keep selling Christ’s churches to Muslims? Is it a humiliation ritual?” Marshall posted on X.
Some social media users have called for fundraising efforts to buy the church back for Catholics. Others have declared it better for the church to be demolished than “misused” by Muslims.
Catholic church “consolidation” closures have been ramping up in recent years, often without serious efforts to remedy underlying financial or attendance problems, or without adequate grounds to order closures in the first place. Sales of Catholic churches to Muslims have been growing as well.
For example, St. Ann’s Church and Shrine in Buffalo was sold in 2022 to a group affiliated with the Downtown Islamic Center; St. Gerard Roman Catholic Church was sold by the Diocese of Buffalo to Muslims who converted it into a mosque in 2017.
“We do worship the same God. Although, some people think that we don’t and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has been very active in the Muslim community for almost 40 years,” St. Gerard’s former priest, Father Francis Mazur, said at the time.
While the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium claims about Muslims that “together with us they adore the one, merciful God,” they do not believe that Jesus is God and they reject the Holy Trinity. Therefore, “That we Catholics adore with the Muslims the one God is not true,” as Bishop Athanasius Schneider has written and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and others have affirmed.