ST. LOUIS — About 50 people gathered Wednesday at St. Roch Catholic Church to plan an appeal of the decision to close their parish this summer in a major downsizing of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

The decree signed by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski to close the 112-year-old parish in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood cites four reasons: declining numbers of Catholic households, Mass attendance and infant baptisms along with an operating deficit of more than $1 million over the last five years. St. Roch’s finances and boundaries will be absorbed by Christ the King in University City.

The reasons for the closure are superficial and discount the parish’s heritage of evangelism and diversity, “contrary to the mission of our faith,” said Michael Stephens, president of the St. Roch parish council, in an appeal letter to Rozanski.

The “All Things New” plan announced May 27 will cut the number of parishes from 178 to 135 across the archdiocese, which includes St. Louis city and 10 surrounding counties in Missouri. The plan does not close any parish churches, which will remain open for personal worship in the immediate future. The 18-month reorganization was launched to address a declining number of Catholics and priests to serve them, particularly as the population center in the region moves westward.

St. Roch’s 295 registered households put the parish in the mid-range of those slated to close or merge by Aug. 1. The largest parish on the closure list is St. Matthias in Lemay, with 880 registered households. The smallest is St. Catherine of Alexandria in Ste. Genevieve County, with 29 households.

It is very difficult to win an appeal of a parish closure, said attorney and canon law expert Brody Hale, who is working with the local advocacy group Save Rome of the West.

“I would not discourage anyone from filing but would also make note for the record, fighting for a church is always easier than fighting for a parish,” Hale said. “A church is the actual sacred edifice. What a parish actually is, it’s a piece of territory on a map where you’re guaranteed services in at least one church.”

A church in a closed parish is only required to host Mass twice a year — on the namesake saint’s feast day and on the anniversary of the church’s dedication, Hale said. The pastor of the parish absorbing any closed parish will make decisions on Mass times and locations, according to an archdiocese spokeswoman.

In other cities, surplus churches in the same parish tend to last for one to five years before they are permanently closed, Hale said.

“From what I have seen, this is a means of avoiding contentious appeals and gradually slow-walking a church over a cliff,” he said.

While some parishioners said they are resigned to the changes, others vowed to file appeals to Rozanski by the due date of June 12. Rozanski then has 30 days to grant or deny the appeal, after which the parishioner can take the appeal to the Vatican courts, a process that can take months or even years.

The appeals process will not stop or delay the parish closures from going into effect. The group Save Our St. Louis Parishes is distributing a packet to assist with the process that says, “the parish is where we encounter the Church at a practical level. Parishes are to the Church what families are to society. When parishes fail, the Church fails.”

The group recommends establishing a nonprofit or trust fund for the parish, so the laity can receive donations and pay the bills directly. Nonprofits run the former parish churches Shrine of St. Joseph in downtown St. Louis and Old St. Ferdinand Shrine in Florissant.

Jason Bolte, founder of Save Rome of the West, said he plans to appeal the closure of his parish, St. Barnabas in O’Fallon, Missouri. The parish will merge into Assumption in O’Fallon with its land and buildings turned over to a newly created Hispanic parish called San Juan Diego.

“We’re not just going to lay down and say there’s nothing more we can do,” Bolte said. “I hope and pray that it does in fact get overturned. In my opinion, the creation of this new parish can be established anywhere there is extra space for them to worship in.”

Catholics in the dozens of parishes that will now share a pastor under “All Things New” are not eligible to file appeals, which are only for changes to the structure of a parish.

The plan also involved the reassignment of 155 priests, who are not expected to appeal the moves. Twenty-seven priests will pastor more than one parish, up from 18 currently.

At least one priest said he was confused by the terminology of All Things New, which described closed parishes as amalgamated with another parish after being subsumed.

“We have been submerged, if that’s the word he used I think,” the Rev. Thomas Haley of Blessed Teresa in Ferguson said a week ago Saturday during Mass after reading Rozanski’s letter about the parish being absorbed by Sacred Heart in Florissant. Parishioners told Haley the word was “subsumed.”

“Subsumed? I thought it was submerged. Drowned. No, no, you sure it wasn’t submerged? Didn’t I read that? Well son of a gun. Subsumed! Ah, that’s what it was. Subsumed,” Haley said. “Which means one parish united to another in a way that the first parish no longer exists, the second parish remains. So we weren’t submerged, we were subsumed, which is bad enough, I guess. Anyway, let us pray.”

Opponents of “All Things New” recommend praying for a positive outcome after filing appeal letters.

The parishioners of St. Roch have never been so energized and unified, said Bill Hannegan, who has attended the church since 1965. They have experienced a “double trauma” this spring, he said, with the death of longtime pastor Monsignor Salvatore Polizzi, 92, coming just weeks before the closure announcement.

“His big thing was ‘St. Roch’s will never close while I’m here.’ Then he dies and a month later it closes,” Hannegan said. “I’m really attached to that place and for me, it’s consoling to know we can still go there. It’s not going to be padlocked and that’s it, it’s over.”

Taylor Tiamoyo Harris and Josh Renaud of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.