"Such piety," the plaque reads, "deserves a continual and charitable remembrance."

Just how continual is yet to be seen, as the tower, the courtyard behind it and the church itself are destined to one day stand empty, just one casualty of the Diocese of Camden's sweeping parish mergers announced last week. The 1,236 parishioners at St. Peter will have to worship at St. Bernadette Church in Northfield, home to 3,810 congregants.

The last Mass at St. Peter could be held anywhere between one to two years from now, Diocese spokesman Andrew Walton said, and what will happen to the land is a question only the new pastoral and financial councils formed after the merger could answer.

But for St. Peter's parishioners, the merger raises a lot of questions. Unlike many of the mergers, combining parishes of similar demographics, many within the same city, St. Peter has a large Hispanic population - and there are no Masses conducted in Spanish at St. Bernadette.

"I want to know, why are they picking on poor Pleasantville?" asked Barbara Lee. "What are they going to do about the Spanish Masses? They didn't think it all the way through. It's a true Spanish Mass they have here."

Lee also brought up another group that might find itself lost in the shuffle of the move to Northfield.

"What about the Koreans?" she asked. "They haven't even mentioned them. We're a multicultural church, and they didn't take that into consideration."

"As part of the merger process, you look at things like Mass schedules," Walton said when asked about the Spanish Masses. "What they need to do is ask, 'What do we need to do to best serve the people in our parish?'"

St. Bernadette's parishioners said Thursday that the large number of Spanish-speaking congregants shouldn't pose any difficulties.

"It's a beautiful thing," Rosemary O'Dowd said. "We welcome them. Demographics change, and we're here and that's all that's important."

Sitting in the pews before Saturday Mass at St. Peter's, parishioner Axilis Perez, of Pleasantville, heard the news of the closing for the first time.

"It's very sad," Perez said. "I was married here five years ago."

Would she follow the church to its new home in Northfield? To her, not doing so wasn't even a consideration.

"Of course," she said. "I have to."

When the Mass had ended, Pleasantville resident Tom Letizia pointed to the sign outside the entraceway.

"We support our bishop," Letizia said, reading the message with a smile. "They all take a vow of obedience, right? The bishop decides, and he's got to lead his flock."

WILDWOOD CREST - The decision to merge the parishes of St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Wildwood and the Church of the Assumption here did not come as a great surprise - talk of mergers had been ongoing in the diocese - but that did not lessen the blow for angry parishioners Thursday.

"I have nothing against St. Ann's, but it's not us," said Kay Clowry, Assumption's organist for the past 15 years.

Clowry, also a member of the parish council, offered several reasons to oppose the merger: the annual children's Christmas pageant, the burden the move would place on elderly worshippers, the devastation of a church family.

"I think it's a very bad thing. This is a vital and viable parish," she said.

Catholics across the six counties that fall under the Diocese of Camden learned Thursday whether their churches would be among those required to merge.

The decision, announced by Bishop Joseph Galante, follows the church's planning initiative, Gathering God's Gifts, which the diocese said was designed to find ways to strengthen and revitalize parish life in the diocese.

But Nicholas Nastasi, an Assumption parishioner who served on the Gathering God's Gifts group, said Galante's actions were having the opposite effect.

"The bishop is scattering God's gifts rather than bringing them together," Nastasi said.

His parish plans to appeal the merger to the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome and is seeking legal advice to clarify ownership of the church and its properties in hopes of creating a charitable trust foundation that would keep Assumption's parishioners together in some fashion.

"It's not going to stop here," Nastasi promised.

Nastasi, also part of the parish council, said he believed the merger would be a gradual change made after a lengthy process of review, but instead he said the church moved too fast using inaccurate information about the parish.

Nastasi said his parish is financially stable with strong attendance figures supported by 1,139 households.

"The main reason for the movement against the decision to merge is identity," he said. "You cannot expect people to attend one church then move to another when the season permits."

He said that once the merger takes effect, he expects parishioners will scatter, moving to other churches beyond St. Ann's and Five Mile Beach.

"This is the breaking down of a parish family," he said.

Under the diocese's plan, Assumption would be open in the summer when the island's population swells.

"We're losing our identity as a parish because of a single bishop out to make a name for himself," Nastasi said.

Nastasi said the call for a merger also disregards the people who are the heart of the church.

"The people are the future of the Catholic church," he said. "It's the people's church, not the bishop's church."

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