“Meanwhile, the diocese sold one of its properties to an Evangelical minister who is desperately trying to sell the gorgeous stained glass windows. It makes no sense.”
It makes perfect sense, NYer. The Roman Catholic hierarchs both thoroughly dislike and at the same time fear priests like your abouna and parishes like yours. Its been true for over 100 years. The priests of Non-Roman particular churches in communion with Rome here in the States are a threat and a challenge to the Roman straps. The history of +Alexis Toth and his Ruthenians is instructive in this regard. The evangelical minister isn’t viewed as a threat (though he should be)while your abouna is (and shouldn’t be).
Here in WV, the bishop of Wheeling simply closed an Italian Roman Catholic Church after there was some damage from mining subsidence, and kept the $1,000,000 insuance payout, for his own needs. It has been destroyed, of course. I also lament the attempt to homogenize the church. (You should see the horrible architecture at the new "award-winning" gray box of a Roman Catholic church in the next town.)
In the next town over, his predecessor closed the Polish/Slovak Catholic church for no known reason, and went so far to tramp out any sense of heritage that he forbade the Polish and Slovak ethnic associations ever to meet there in the future even after it had been closed as a church and was being used for community meetings. It is now a beautiful concert hall, used several times a year for concerts.
And who can forget the historic Croatian Catholic church on the north side of the river across from downtown Pittsburgh, the earliest such church in the country, which the bishop of Pittsburgh closed against the protests of the faithful, despite no falloff in either attendance or donations; and insisted on proposing to tear down despite its historic landmark significance being recognized by generations of Pittsburghers.