The Divine Mercy Chapel

Friends, peace be with you.

We’ve had some issues with the use of the Parish Center and Divine Mercy Chapel for the past several weeks. First, sometime in July, there was a bit of a disagreement between some people as to the use of the Chapel after they reposed the Blessed Sacrament at 9:00pm. Like the person involved, I was unaware until this incident took place that it’s our policy that people leave the building and the building is effectively closed until 6:30am. It makes sense that this be the policy, however, because things change after dark around St. Pat’s and it’s not entirely safe for people to be coming and going into the night around here. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t instantly become a hellscape of violence and warfare. But it’s fairly common for people to be wandering around on the sidewalks or through the parking lot that appear to be intoxicated or otherwise acting strangely and sometimes those people can also be violent and confrontational. So, for more of a public safety reason than anything else, we basically restrict the use of the parish center between 9:00pm and 6:30am.

Next, we discovered in the middle of August that the keypads on the parish center, which normally don’t function after 9:15pm and start working again at 6:30am, were not being shut off at night. We think one of the power outages that we’ve had recently adjusted it to being on all the time. That is now fixed so that the building will, in effect, be locked from 9:00 at night until 6:30 in the morning.

With that being said, I want to make sure people feel welcome and comfortable to use the building. If there is some extraordinary reason that you want or need to meet during the time when the building is closed, please contact a staff member so we can put it on the calendar and find a way to give you access. It may not be possible but, if it is, we can make exceptions. For instance, we are aware that a group of guys meet starting at 5:00am because it works best in their schedule. I believe one of them has a key to the building from past administrations. We are glad the building is being used for these types of spiritual growth and support meetings but it would be best for us to know when it is and isn’t happening for the knowledge of our janitorial staff. Unfortunately, that does mean that the chapel isn’t available after hours when someone may be having a spiritual crisis and just needs to spend time with the Lord.

Lastly, if you have a key to the parish center and we don’t necessarily know about it, if you could make a staff member aware that you have it and why you have it, we would be greatly appreciated. This is one of the surprising things that comes up on an audit in terms of security. We’re supposed to restrict who has keys to try to prevent things being stolen or vandalized. If we know who has keys, we can also know who we can contact about whether they may have accidentally left a door unlocked or let someone in the building who didn’t really belong. Thanks for your help on this.