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Do You Think Fishtown Is A Slum? The Vatican Does, According To Documents


While Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Archbishop Charles Chaput were getting settled in Rome to discuss the upcoming Papal visit, The Vatican was sending out PDFs explaining their reasons why they think St. Laurentius, a Fishtown Catholic church, isn’t worth saving.

After learning about the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s decree to re­leg­at­e St. Lauren­ti­us to “profane, but not sordid use,” a community group of dedicated individuals called Save St. Laurentius sub­mit­ted an appeal to both the Archdiocese and The Vat­ic­an re­quest­ing the decision be reversed in order to save their church. Months ago the Archdiocese told Save St. Laurentius that this appeal had been denied but the group was waiting to hear the decision for themselves.

This decision came last night in the form of a PDF rejection notice. These documents explaining why The Vatican denied the appeal were made available to The Spirit. We took a look through the file and what did we find as the #2 reason behind The Vatican’s rejection? Well, Fishtown is a shit hole, apparently.

To quote the document:

“Whereas this Fishtown section served by the former parish has suffered great demographic declines for five decades, losing population and business, and being used as an example of urban blight.”

Since when were coffee shops, beer gardens and rising property values defining marks of “urban blight?” Maybe they saw an Instagram of Olive and got the wrong impression of the area. But seriously, did anyone at The Vatican bother to Google Fishtown or read the New York Times? Maybe Mayor Nutter could ask someone about this while he’s visiting.

But not all is lost for St. Laurentius. Earlier this month a committee of the Philadelphia Historical Commission voted unanimously in support of a recommendation to nominate St. Laurentius Church as a historic site. If the church is designated as a historic site it would avoid being demolished and developed into…only God knows what.

When the documents were read by our staff we were a little offended by The Vatican’s harsh words about our home, so we looked up some numbers and found out that despite what the leaders of Catholicism might think, Fishtown is, in fact, not a shit hole.

Laurentius fall insides Census tract 158, which covers a triangular area north of Girard Ave. and east of Frankford Ave.

Laurentius Census Map

A map of census tracts surrounding St. Laurentius Church.

If the neighborhood surrounding the church is in indeed blighted, as the Vatican argues, we would’ve guessed houses were worth less in that area than in Philadelphia on average. To the contrary, 5-year estimates from the American Communities Survey suggest median house value was about $142,500 in Philadelphia in 2013.

Residential property in tract 158 is considerably higher than in Philadelphia on the whole and seems to be increasing. Median house value in tract 158 was $167,800 in 2009 and increased by a totally of almost $11,000 over the next four years.

So what do you think, Fishtown? Did The Vatican properly characterize the neighborhood in their report?

The church has been subject to quite the controversy and The Spirit has been covering the story extensively:

CONTRACTORS REMOVE NEW BRICK SAMPLES FROM ST. LAURENTIUS

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ST. LAURENTIUS? DEBATE CONTINUES BETWEEN LEADERS

HOLY SPECULATIONS: ACADEMIC ANALYSIS OF ST. LAURENTIUS UNCOVERS HYPERBOLE AND TRUTH

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