TOWN OF TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WKBW) — Members of St. Andrews Church walked out of mass on Sunday for the first time since learning about the parish's upcoming closure.
The Buffalo Diocese has announced that St. Andrew's Church, along with St. Andrew's Day School, will be closing on or before June 30.
This news brought feelings of heartbreak and anger for the school's parents, students and staff — and is also leaving the churchgoers with heavy hearts.
"I've been crying all weekend. I've been talking to other people ... that have been crying all weekend," Kathryn Jaremko, a member of St. Andrew's Church for almost two decades, said. "You're never completely prepared for something like this."
7 News reporter Hannah Ferrera met Jaremko as Jaremko was heading out of Sunday's mass — when the church's closure was officially announced in the building. Jaremko has been a member of the Faith Band Ensemble, and reflected on her years of church involvement.
"It's very hard to know that the people you've bonded with and worshipped with for all this matter of time are going to be going to different places, and the family kind of dissolves," she said.
This idea of "family" was a repeating theme when 7 News senior reporter Eileen Buckley visited St. Andrew's Day School on Friday.
"You walk into the building, and it's a feeling of home," Katie Condon, a parent, told Buckley. "There are a lot of kids who come here because they were bullied in other schools ... from the principal, to all the teachers, to all the parents and families, we're very, very close. We're a family."
The diocese said this family isn't over.
"That's what the renewal is about — making sure that we focus on a future," Father Bryan Zielenieski, Vicar for Renewal and Development for the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, said.
However, churchgoers like Jaremko are scared to lose their close-knit group.
"It's very different when a church dissolves like this," she said. "It's not just the building and the school we're getting rid of. It's a humongous family."
