Court Opinion

ID: 9763539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:48:42.076939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:45.694311
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I concur in the decision of the Court but in doing so I cannot refrain from expressing a deep melancholy in the passing of St. Peter’s Church on Fernando Street of Pittsburgh. For a half century it has offered religious comfort, spiritual solace, and soulful contemplation to its parishioners and all those who have stepped within its cathedral-like vastness. The destruction of an ecclesiastical building is necessarily an event of sadness because it is, after all, a house of God.
Nothing can be more sacred to a devout person than his church. It is an implementation of, and almost a synonym with, parental attachment,- it is more than a house of prayer, it is a ship on which he books passage for the eternal voyage which will reunite him with all the beloved ones who have gone before. When he has practically been born into a church, when he has striven with full heart to maintain it over years and decades, when he glories in its immaculate beauty and accepts it as his guardian angel, it is an almost unbearable shock to him to contemplate that it might cease to exist. ...
*203During the war I saw many churches in the No Man’s Land of battle being shelled by artillery, blasted by grenades and razed by bombs dropped from airplanes. One of the supreme joys I experienced in the ending of the war was the realization that churches would no longer be crushed between conflicting engines of destruction. And this memory accentuates all the more my feeling of sadness in the passing of the church on Fernando Street — in a day of peace.
St. Peter’s Church is an ecclesiastical monument of rare and priceless beauty. Architecturally and artistically, it is breath-taking in its ampleness, sweep, harmony of lines and classical symmetry. It stands in the very midst of the metropolis of Pittsburgh, a blessed sanctuary of marble and precious stone, flanked by a grotto of heart-warming radiance — a Lourdes Memorial Shrine — to which through the years tens of thousands have made holy pilgrimage.
St. Peter’s Church, as a structure, will be razed because of a redevelopment plan which envisages the clearing of 90 acres in the so-called Lower Hill Area of Pittsburgh. The Most Reverend John F. Deardon, Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, who holds title to the lands, buildings, and appurtenances of St. Peter’s Church in trust for the congregation, cannot but regard with heavy heart the disappearance of this magnificent and holy house of worship, but it is not within his temporal power to stay the act of an agency of government. The Constitution provides for a complete separation between church and state.
The clearing of the 90-acre tract is the result of action taken under the provisions of the Urban Redevelopment Law of May 24, 1945, P. L. 991, as amended (35 P.S. §1701, et seq.). The clearing is part of the vast program of renaissance and rebuilding in Pittsburgh. This program, insofar as it pertains to the *204Hill Area, has now reached an advanced stage of fulfillment. Any stoppage or major alteration in it would cause confusion and chaos as well as visit irreparable damage on others whose rights have since intervened. Judge Brown of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County well described the situation in his opinion refusing preliminary injunction: “The Urban Redevelopment Authority has entered into a. loan and grant agreement with the Federal Government; has issued its notes for land acquisition and other costs; and has acquired hundreds of properties in the Lower Hill Redevelopment Area. As this is one of the largest projects of redevelopment ever undertaken in our. City,as well as perhaps in the entire Commonwealth, and in view of the fact that the work is going on within a five-minute walk of this court house, we take judicial notice of the tremendous undertaking involved in this redevelopment project, which comprises over 90 acres in a formerly densely populated district.”
Nevertheless, I sympathize with the parishioners and can appreciate their agony of spirit in the loss of a church to which they are attached and devoted through years of attendance, sacrifice and memories of the most sacred events in the lives of their respective families. But, as pointed out in Justice Bok’s opinion, the law applicable to the case is explicit and, as it now stands, can offer no alternative in the disposition of the legal issue involved.
However, speaking for myself, I am confident that the loyalty manifested by the parishioners toward their Church can not go unnoticed and unrequited, and that in the broad expanse of their fealty and devotion, a church will rise to receive the expression of their faith and their love.