St. Vincent de Paul Church, a familiar downtown landmark and one of the city’s oldest Catholic churches, will no longer house a parish as of July 1 but will continue as an additional worship site, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Archbishop William E. Lori said in a decree issued over the weekend that the archdiocese is moving forward with plans to merge St. Vincent’s with St. Leo the Great, another historic church located a half-mile away in Little Italy.

Lori cited a dwindling number of Catholic households in the St. Vincent parish, a decline in Mass attendance, the proximity of four other parishes within a mile, and a limited number of volunteers due to an aging congregation. “It is my opinion that left to itself, St. Vincent de Paul parish will only continue to decline with the resultant diminishing of pastoral ministry and sacramental life,” he said in the decree.