St. Stephen Church in Streator deemed no longer a holy place

St. Stephen Church in Streator has been relegated to profane use by Bishop Louis Tylka of the Peoria Diocese, who decreed the building no longer will be a place of worship.

On Oct. 1, St. Michael the Archangel Parish conducted a final Mass at St. Stephen Church, after its pastor the Rev. Msgr. Philip Halfacre announced it was deteriorating and no longer safe for use. The congregation has been holding regular Masses at St. Anthony Church since.

The bishop’s decree also designated St. Anthony Church as the principal church for the St. Michael parish.

“It was discovered that the physical building of St. Stephen Church was deteriorating, leading the pastor to request a professional building inspection,” Tykla said in his decree. “On Oct. 6, 2023, it was reported by a civil engineer and a structural engineer that St. Stephen Church, 801 E. Lundy St., Streator, is not safe to occupy. Testing of the concrete walls determined that the concrete strength of the foundation walls is below the minimum civil standard to safely maintain the building’s structural integrity. The brick walls have cracking and general deterioration throughout. In the professional opinion of the engineers, ‘the building should be abandoned in the interest of public safety.’”

Methods to repair the structural foundation were explored, such as jacking the building to replace the foundation, Tylka said. Engineers advised the mortar in the masonry walls would not withstand the strain of this operation and the building “would likely collapse,” Tylka said.

“It is the conclusion of the engineers that St. Stephen Church is ‘irreparable from both a practical and economical perspective,’” Tylka said.

When a church has been decreed to profane use, sacred objects are removed and still treated as sacred. These objects may move to other Catholic churches. The church’s altar remains a sacred object, according to Tylka.

“If the altar is to be relegated, a separate decree will be issued,” Tylka said.

St. Stephen Church is the second of Streator’s four Catholic churches to be decreed to profane use since the Sept. 29, 2010, merger of the four parishes to one. Immaculate Conception Church also was relegated to profane use, then sold. The building, Streator’s first Catholic church, still stands at the corner of Park and Kent streets, but remains unused.

While St. Casimir Church, St. Michael the Archangel parish’s other church along with St. Anthony, is not regularly used, it remains a sacred place of worship and still is a church within the parish.

Halfacre has said moving to St. Anthony Church, 407 S. Park St., is a temporary solution to an immediate problem. Healy-Bender-Patton & Been, an architectural firm, estimates the cost of repairing St. Anthony Church to be about $4 million, not including any repairs that may need to be made to the twin steeples. Prior to becoming the main place of worship for the St. Michael parish, St. Anthony has been used for the past 12 years for school Masses.

“St. Anthony Church does not have immediate life safety issues, it does indeed have significant problems that cannot be ignored as we move forward,” Halfacre said.

St. Stephen Parish, in particular, was the first Catholic parish established by Slovak Americans in the U.S. It was formed in 1883, and the church was built in 1906. In the final Mass, Halfacre compared the closure of the church to a death in the family or to family members moving out of the house.