St. Francis sits on a beautiful parcel of land near the ocean. it must be worth a fortune. i don’t know how large this parish might be as there is another Catholic Church in Scituate Harbor which appears to have a huge congregation.
If there are only 100 regular parishoners at St. Francis, they could easily blend into the other Parish. We had a situation like this in Worcester. It was an older building, and the neighborhood had changed around it, and there were only a few families left. Of course, when the Diocese announced they were closing it, folks came from miles around, because they'd had some sort of connection to it in the past, even though they hadn't been in it in years. They 'occupied' the Church for a while, too. At first, I felt sorry for them, until one day I happened to be driving in that area of town, and saw the Church. I rolled on about 500 yards, and there was another Catholic Church on the next block!
I mentioned to a friend that I didn't understand why those folks couldn't just go to the other Church, and she said that the Church that was closing was the old 'French' Church, and the other one was the 'Irish' Church, so the folks didn't want to go to that one. At that point, my opinion was that they needed to get over themselves. If the French church hadn't been doing the necessary repairs, because there weren't enough families to keep it up, and the Irish parish was more active, and keeping up their property, then the French church should close. There was another huge 'French' church about a mile away, anyway, and that's where those folks were gonna go.
When folks talked about how sad it was that the folks there couldn't have their own Church, I reminded them that there were areas of the country, including where my husband grew up in the Mississippi Delta, where Catholics had to drive 30 mins. EACH WAY every Sunday to get to the closest Church. I wasn't going to feel sorry for the folks who had to drive an extra block. Uncharitable, maybe, but much more logical.