In this suburban church, one congregation thrives as another faces Mass cancellation

Every Sunday, hundreds of Christians turn out to worship at a heritage-listed church on Nudgee Road in the working-class north Brisbane suburb of Northgate.

This thriving congregation of Indian migrants and their families belongs to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and call their place of worship St Alphonsa – though many older Catholics who grew up in the area would know the church as St John’s.

Hundreds of worshippers from the St Alphonsa Syro-Malabar Church celebrate a feast day in late July.Credit: Facebook

But as the Syro-Malabar community is thriving, another congregation meeting in the same building has been told its Sunday Mass will be cancelled come September.

Behind the changes at the Northgate church is a demographic shift mirrored around the country as migrants flock to the affordable suburbs of cities like Brisbane.

Established Catholic churches are struggling to attract and retain priests as their congregations age and shrink in size, and as Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches grow in popularity.

This year, the Brisbane Catholic Archdiocese, which oversees the parish church in Northgate, told the congregation it would no longer provide a priest for the 7.30am Sunday Mass.

What data says about the Mother of Mercy parish

• The number of people identifying as Catholic has increased from 5410 in 2016 to 5757 in 2021
• Local Catholics are getting older: 16.7% are aged over 65, compared with 12.7% in 2016
• The proportion of “blue-collar” Catholics – those who work in trades and manual professions – has dropped from 21.3% to 17.3%
• Meanwhile, the proportion of managers and professionals has grown from 44.8% to 51.2%
• The proportion of Catholics born in a non-English speaking country is up from 11.6% to 14%

Source: National Catholic Census Project, based on ABS census data

About 50 English-speaking worshippers have instead been invited to attend Sunday Mass at the parish’s other churches, at Hendra, Clayfield and Hamilton.

That will leave the Syro-Malabar Church, which offers daily Masses spoken in Malayalam, as the only congregation using the space on Nudgee Road.

The yard is also rented out to neighbouring caravan and motorhome hire businesses, with parishioners estimating this made the archdiocese $200,000 a year.

In his regular newsletter, Father Michael Grace acknowledged the decision to cancel Sunday Mass had not been universally welcomed by the St John’s congregation.

“I apologise for any hurts experienced during this change that have left some, especially the Northgate community, feeling less than fully cared for,” he said. “It is a difficult duty to oversee this kind of change, and not one I relish.”

Grace declined interviews with Brisbane Times. However, the archdiocese provided a statement saying the changes were widely accepted by parishioners, who had been offered help to travel to Mass at the parish’s other churches.

It said priests were only permitted to conduct three Masses on Sundays, in accordance with canon law, and that the decision had been made to “ensure the appropriate distribution of priests across the region”.

Question marks remain over the future of the St John’s church building on Nudgee Road.

The heritage-listed St John’s is Australia’s only church built specifically as a Navy war memorial.Credit: Tony Moore

Opened by former prime minister John Gorton, once a fighter pilot and later minister for the Navy, it is an official war memorial for 171 Brisbane sailors who died in World War II.

The archdiocese said it had no plans to sell the land, despite offers from nearby caravan and RV companies, and all rental revenue generated by the church grounds was retained by the parish community.

Father Varghese Vithayathil, who provides Mass for the Syro-Malabar church, said his 500-strong community was unsure of their future.

“We don’t know what [the archdiocese’s] plan is,” Varghese said. “We will continue, if they allow us. If it closes, we just don’t know what we will do.”

A religious procession passes along a Northgate street lined with caravan and motorhome companies.Credit: Facebook

The Syro-Malabar Eastern Catholic Church is the second-largest Eastern Catholic church in the world, after the Ukrainian Catholic Church. There are seven local parishes in Queensland and 40 nationwide.

Eastern Catholic churches are considered to be in full communion with the Vatican, although they do not practise the same Latin rites.

Associate Professor Joel Hodge, head of Australian Catholic University’s school of theology, said the growth of migrant communities had “always been a strength of the Catholic Church in Australia”.

“The proportional growth of these communities is a trend across the country and is reflected in Catholic parishes, schools, associations and vocations,” he said.