Sang Vo came to the United States from Vietnam 12 years ago, settling with his wife and daughter in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood with a large Vietnamese community.
As they adapted to their new life in a foreign country, the family joined St. William's Church. About half the people who attend weekend Masses at St. William's are Vietnamese, and it wasn't long before Vo and his family found friendship and a sense of community there.
But now the church may be one of four Dorchester churches forced to close under a massive reconfiguration of the Boston Archdiocese. The news has shaken the Vietnamese community, which has been one of the church's staunchest supporters during the clergy sex abuse crisis.
"All of the Vietnamese people are praying that this church stays open," said Vo. "If it closes, we don't know where we'll go," he said.
Parishioners in many of the 357 churches of the archdiocese are expected to learn through church bulletins this weekend whether their church is among those recommended for closure.
The recommendations will be made by parish leaders from 80 geographic clusters - groups of churches within the archdiocese - who have been asked by Archbishop Sean O'Malley to come up with at least one or two churches within the cluster to close.
In December, O'Malley announced the plan to close an unspecified number of churches. O'Malley cited declining attendance, a shortage of priests, the exorbitant costs of renovating aging church buildings and the inability of the archdiocese to support struggling parishes in the midst of a financial crisis caused in part by the clergy sex abuse crisis.
Since then, groups of parish leaders and laypeople have been meeting within each cluster, trying to come up with recommendations on how to serve their Catholic population with fewer churches.
The cluster recommendations are just the first step in a process that will eventually send the proposals to O'Malley, who will make the ultimate decisions.
But the recommendations are causing much anxiety among many parishioners, particularly in immigrant communities, where people feel they are part of a closeknit family within their church, said the Rev. Joseph Chinh Nguyen, associate pastor of St. William's.
"They are just like family; it's a spiritual family," Nguyen said. "The people are very, very upset about this."
Nguyen said he and many parishioners at St. William's do not understand why their church is on the list of recommended closures when it has the highest weekly Mass attendance numbers of any of the five churches in the North Dorchester cluster. More than 1,400 people attend weekend Masses at St. William's. About half of the attendees are Vietnamese people.
"We are a vibrant church, so it was a surprise to us," said Nguyen.
O'Malley said Mass attendance, sacramental activity, weekly collections, and the costs needed to renovate church buildings would be some of the criteria used to decide which churches to close.
The archbishop also said special consideration would be given to churches with immigrant communities and schools. St. William's has both. Its school has over 200 students enrolled in grades kindergarten through eight.
Mary Hogan, who has been a parishioner at St. William's for 24 years, said the feeling among some of the cluster representatives seemed to be that the church could be easily absorbed by St. Margaret's Church, a large, imposing church located less than a half-mile from St. William's.
But that decision baffles Hogan and other parishioners because St. Margaret's has lower Mass attendance and fewer sacraments performed there each year.
Parishioners at St. William's sent a letter to O'Malley this week challenging the process used to make the closing recommendation and asking him to name an independent facilitator to oversee a new process.
"O'Malley should come to every parish and talk to the people himself instead of doing it the way it was done," said Randall Tobin, 84, a retired bookbinder who has been going to St. William's for 56 years.
Kathleen Heck, a lawyer hired by the archdiocese to oversee the closing process, said Mass is said in a language other than English in 101 out of the 357 churches in the archdiocese. She said that if one church with an immigrant population closes, the goal of the archdiocese is to make sure another church can continue to serve the group.
"The archdiocese is going to pay very close attention to the needs of those who are new people to this country," she said.
But that is little consolation to Vo and his family.
"We have a Vietnamese priest here who helps us with confession. It is a very good church," he said. "We don't want it to close."