Mergers of 31 additional New York City Catholic churches announced

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York is merging 31 parishes into 14 new parishes in the second phase of a consolidation process, church officials announced Friday.

The good news is that the slashings are now over, at least for now.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan called the process gut wrenching, while many Catholic parishioners called it something else -- heart breaking.

One in five parishes is now closed or will be closed, including All Saints, a church so big it used to be called the St. Pat's of Harlem.

"At least you can take a deep breath and say thanks be to God the decisions are made," Cardinal Dolan said.

The archdiocese is going from 368 parishes down to 296 because of demographics.

"What we've had going in the Archdiocese of New York is that we're still working on an infrastructure that was great for the 30s, 40s and 50s," Dolan said. "When we had tons of priests, when we had families with eight and 10 kids."

Construction on the church was finished in 1889, built for Irish immigrants. Of course, the neighborhood has changed dramatically. The school closed in 2011, and the church will now be combined with another about 12 blocks away.

But a few parishes got good news, like St. Thomas More on the Upper East Side, which will no longer be closing.

In total, the archdiocese will shrink by about 20 percent, with all the changes and mergers set to be completed by August. It is the new reality to try to keep the Catholic faith vibrant in a changed city.