St Martin-Tours

St Martin-Tours was founded in 1897, at the request of Bishop Charles McDonnell. Today, there are approximately 2,500 families registered at St. Martin’s with the physical parish boundaries. The Parish has a thriving elementary school, with approximately 300 students enrolled from nursery school through eighth grade.St. Martin’s is also very active in our local community, working with other Christian churches in the village, through Amityville Ecumenical Ministries, on common causes.

The Dominican Sisters of Amityville left a St Martin-Tours in an Amityville parish where they had been for nearly 100 years. The Dominican Sisters of Amityville have finally made their decision to leave the convent and return home after 98 long, fruitful years at St. Martin of Tours on Long Island which was loved by many people who called it "home."

It was with heavy hearts and deep sadness that the Order left the St Martin-Tours Roman Catholic Church Friday, as declining numbers of nuns increasingly made it impractical for the Order to live and work in the parish. It is a problem and a trend that adversely affects religious orders all over the country.

“I am extremely proud of the work we have done in support of the people and I am very grateful on behalf of everyone,” said Sister Barbara Schwarz. She was one of the last nuns to leave the convent. “It was a blessing to have them minister to us as well. With them, the preaching will continue."

"But there is a sense of loss upon having to walk away from the community where we have lived for over a century," she said. “It is a sad feeling to have to move on after having lived in this area for 25 years.”

A convent has been abandoned because less than a dozen nuns remained in a building that once housed at least 20 women, so the order has decided to move out, Schwarz said. At the age of 68, she was the youngest nun at the convent. “It’s time for it,” she said. We will not be able to justify our presence in that convent with a number of sisters in the community and the median age is that high due to the majority of the women being over the age of 60.

According to Schwarz, those nuns who left went to other convents and the order's motherhouse.
According to Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, the number of religious sisters has dropped from 179,954 in 1965 to 45,605 in 2017 across the country.

According to Sister Peggy McVetty, a Franciscan nun who entered the Dominican order that same year and has worked at St Martin-Tours, the Dominican Sisters of Amityville had about 1,200 nuns in 1975. Now there are only 381. Schwarz said the Amityville Sisters have worked in St. Martin of Tours for at least ninety years, beginning in 1921 with the opening of a parish school manned mainly by nuns.

Her belief is their presence dates back even further. She is convinced that one of the nuns was involved in the baptism of a child in the parish in 1877, partly due to the fact that the order's motherhouse, if you will, is not far from the parish's Amityville headquarters. This motherhouse was established in 1876 on what had once been an agricultural property as the founders expanded their work out of Brooklyn.

The nuns of St. Martin’s will be missed dearly according to a longtime parishioner at St. Martin’s, Michelle Hackett. “We are very saddened,” Hackett, who has been connected to the sisters since they were girls in the early 1970s when she attended the parish school. “They’re an icon. They’ve taught us well. I feel that it’s a shame that they are gone.”

It comes as no surprise that Long Island’s largest religious order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, also goes through the same challenges. A few months ago, three members of the order left Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church in West Babylon, ending the order’s membership at this parish for more than 50 years.

Sister Alice McVey, one of the last sisters to leave the parish, said, “When you are the last ones left in a place where so much good, so much growth, and so much development have taken place over the years, it is difficult to leave it.” According to McVey, the Sisters of St. Joseph lived and worked at Our Lady of Grace for at least 57 years.

“It is also true that parishioners have taken on a leading role in both the parish as a whole and in the staff and teachers individually,” she stated. “This is where the church is moving towards. It is moving towards this group of dedicated parishioners who will continue to practice their faith, despite the fact that there are not going to be as many women religious or priests.”


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