Park Forest, IL—(ENEWSPF)— Former Park Forest Mayor John Ostenburg has become frustrated by the way the Archdiocese of Chicago is maintaining the old St. Irenaeus Church property. He has written to Cardinal Blase Cupich with his concerns.

Ostenburg said many Catholics in Park Forest were hurt by the closing of their parish church a few years ago, but “Now insult also has become injury!”

The following is the text of a letter Ostenburg has sent to the Cardinal, urging his involvement in improving the property’s condition.

Former Mayor Ostenburg to Cardinal Cupich: Dear Eminence

Cardinal Blase Cupich
Archdiocese of Chicago
885 N. Rush St.
Chicago, IL 60611-2030

Dear Eminence:

For 20 years, I served as Mayor of Park Forest, retiring in 2019. I previously had served seven years as a Village Trustee and also represented my community and neighboring municipalities in the Illinois General Assembly as a State Representative from 1993 to 1995. During that entire period, I was a member of St. Irenaeus Parish in Park Forest.

To say that St. Irenaeus was a major component of community life in Park Forest would be to minimize its status, for indeed it served in far greater capacities than those words might convey. Just a few examples:

• for years it was a regular site for the community’s annual interfaith Thanksgiving service;
• it housed a community garden and a Catholic Charities food pantry;
• it was site for the ceremony that kicked-off of the annual “Silent Parade” hosted by the Park Forest Fire Department, that involved numerous units from various surrounding towns that traveled through the streets with emergency lights flashing but with no sound, witnessed by hundreds of citizens who moved out from that service to stand in tribute, many holding lighted candles as the vehicles passed by;
• it was site for the community’s annual “Blue Mass” to honor police officers;
• when one of our Park Forest police officers, Officer Tim Jones, was shot in the line of duty, St. Irenaeus was site for a massive outpouring of local residents in support of him (sadly, Officer Jones died this past December 3 after nearly 10 years of struggle to gain recovery);
• it was a racially integrated congregation that reflected the unique status of Park Forest as a town that voluntarily welcomed integration by inviting its first African American residents who moved into the community on Christmas Eve 1959, rather than fighting to keep them out as occurred in so many other cities and villages.

“Saddened and Dismayed”

Needless to say, I was as saddened and dismayed by the closing of my home parish a few years ago as was anyone else. However, I understand the financial burden that the Archdiocese faced with so many parishes to maintain at the same time as congregations were diminishing in size, and I also understand and appreciate the decline in the number of clergy available to staff so many facilities. As regards the latter, some years ago I was a member in studies of the Clerics of St. Viator; I was shocked to learn recently from one of my former Viatorian colleagues that the entire population of the order in the U.S. today barely equals the number of priests and brothers that serviced only my high school in Springfield at the time I entered the community. The decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life is having an effect on Catholic institutions everywhere and I can appreciate the burden you face in deciding what will remain an operational facility of the Archdiocese and what will not.

Note: Emphasis Below Is Original to Letter

So, please do not take this letter as an expression of bitterness over the closing of St. Irenaeus, for indeed that is not my intent in sending it. However, I do want to express my extreme dissatisfaction with what has occurred in the aftermath of the closing: what once was a magnificent structure standing at the very heart of my community–physically as well as spiritually and figuratively –today is an eyesore! The entire St.Irenaeus campus, that includes not only the former church, but also the former school, the former rectory, and the former convent are not being properly maintained, regularly have had an overgrowth of grass and weeds, and are a blemish where once they stood as a beauty.

Adding to the sad reality of how things look today is the fact that immediately across the street from the campus is a new housing development that likely will be bringing new residents to our community this coming Spring. What a sad welcome it will be for those new residents to be looking out their windows at the blighted condition of the former St. Irenaeus Parish compound.

This letter, therefore, is an appeal that you intervene and direct Archdiocesan staff to give the proper amount of attention to the condition of our once beautiful parish complex. I realize that the property is for sale, and certainly an enhancement of it also will make it more marketable, and it once again may become occupied. Hopefully this letter will not become entangled in a bureaucratic process that keeps it from your attention, and you will give consideration to my request.

Yours most sincerely,

John A. Ostenburg