St. Francis Seraph Catholic Church — one of Cincinnati’s oldest and most historically significant churches — will cease operation this summer and be placed on the market.
Friar Alan Hirt first made the announcement to parishioners during a Jan. 11 mass.
“It is with personal sadness that I share with you that our Franciscan province finds it necessary to proceed with the sale of both the friary and the church building,” he said to audible reactions from the congregation. “Just take that in for a second.”
A representative of the Franciscan Friars’ Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe confirmed the news to CityBeat, saying the province’s decision was a continuation of discerning “how best to steward its resources and respond to the needs of an aging fraternity.”
The two Friars at St. Francis Seraph Church will be reassigned to St. Clement Catholic Church in St. Bernard, where parishioners are also invited to transition.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Hirt said. “I know for me, brother Tim, that knowing this since last October and the parish council was brought into this in mid-December, we continue to have our feelings. Just take a moment to get in touch with those initial feelings, no matter what they are: shock, ‘not again,’ sadness, maybe frustration, disbelief. Feel what you’re feeling. I know our parish has a rich history in Over-the-Rhine.”
From its 19th-century origins to recent debates over public safety and outreach, St. Francis Seraph Church has long been a focal point for cultural shifts in Over-the-Rhine.
Historical significance
Before the present-day St. Francis Seraph Church rose along Liberty Street, the site held one of the earliest centers of Catholic life in Cincinnati.
In 1819, a small group of Irish Catholic settlers erected a simple wooden church called Christ Church. At the time, the land was called the Northern Liberties, sitting just beyond the city’s northern border. The congregation established the city’s first Catholic cemetery beside the church, creating a spiritual and physical anchor for a growing immigrant community.
Three years later, Edward Fenwick, the first bishop of Cincinnati, designated Christ Church as the city’s cathedral and ordered the building relocated Downtown. The frame church fell apart upon transport but was rebuilt at a new location. The cemetery remained in place as the surrounding neighborhood developed and later became known as Over-the-Rhine.
By the mid-19th century, the area had become a dense enclave of German immigrants, many of them Catholic. The rapid growth of German-speaking parishes led Archbishop John Baptist Purcell to invite Franciscan friars from Austria to serve the community, and the Franciscans established a new parish at the former Christ Church site. Construction of the St. Francis Seraph Church we know today began in 1858 and was completed the following year.
Families with relatives buried in the old cemetery were asked to relocate remains to other burial grounds. Some chose instead to have the remains placed in a crypt constructed beneath the sanctuary of the new church.
Approximately 41 individuals were ultimately entombed below the high altar, creating a collective burial space that reflected both the continuity of the site and the early Catholic presence in the city. The crypt, with stone markers set into the floor, remained largely inaccessible to the public for more than a century. In recent years, the crypt has been opened to the public through guided walking tours, like the American Legacy Queen City Underground Tour.
Over the years, St. Francis Seraph was gradually adorned with frescoes, statuary and other liturgical artwork. Early 20th-century renovations reshaped the sanctuary, added a choir for the friars and introduced a large canopy over the altar, and a Lourdes grotto was later built on the grounds. Exterior updates in the 1920s gave the church its distinctive glazed-brick façade and prominent twin spires, which became landmarks on the Over-the-Rhine skyline.
Public safety around the church
The iconic church is also known in more recent history for its busy sidewalk corner.
As recently as 2024, the corner of Vine and Liberty was a popular gathering spot that drew ire from church leaders and Cincinnati police. Warmer months drew dozens of people and lawn chairs, food and clothing giveaways, and some drug sales, according to CPD.
The church allowed unhoused people to sleep in the sanctuary for up to eight hours a day, but that stopped in 2024. That same year, church leaders, police and the city manager’s office teamed up on a “joint problem-solving effort” to address sidewalk activity outside the church, according to I-Team reporting from WCPO.
“They believe our church should be a church and not a place for social services,” Hirt wrote in a 2024 church bulletin.
“The goal is to make this not an outreach center, not a place where people can come and get rest and all that,” Brother Tim Sucher told WCPO in 2024. “This is going to be a church. Period.”
Crime statistics for Over-the-Rhine have been a mixed bag in recent years — some categories are down while others are up — but data from 2022-early 2026 does not show an outsized concentration of reported crimes directly outside St. Francis Seraph Church.
It’s this block — the corner of Green and Republic streets — that bumps up against the adjoining St. Francis Seraph friary. The recent press release from the Franciscan Friars’ Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe notes that, with the exception of the parish office, the friary portion of the large church building has remained vacant for the past two years. In 2024, the province sought to sell the friary to the nonprofit Tender Mercies for a new housing project for the homeless and mentally ill.
“We’re hoping that it could be a form of affordable housing with supportive services to get some of these people off the street into decent housing,” Hirt told WCPO in 2024. “The Franciscans would love to see it used that way, more than some boutique hotel or something.”
But the Over-the-Rhine Community Council Board of Trustees voted down the proposed housing project, citing financial and community risks.
CityBeat has reached out to OTRCC about the future of the church building.
Future of Franciscan services
The church has served neighborhood residents in need for generations — the Franciscan Friars started one of the city’s first soup kitchens in the ‘70s. In 2011, the church spun off its neighborhood services effort known as St. Francis Seraph Ministries into an independent 501(c)(3) organization, which operates out of the neighboring St. Anthony Center on Republic Street.
Church officials confirmed that St. Francis Seraph Ministries will continue to operate as usual despite the church closure; St. Francis Seraph School will also continue to operate across the street.
Mary Pat Raupach, executive director of St. Francis Seraph Ministries, said many volunteers are parishioners from the church. Volunteers serve three meals a day to those who are hungry: a sit-down breakfast, a bagged lunch and a sit-down dinner.
Then there’s a program led by a nurse practitioner where volunteers provide basic foot care for those experiencing homelessness, like washing feet, treating calluses, cutting nails and treating more serious foot issues. The Sarah Center is another project where volunteers teach sewing, quilting and jewelry-making skills. Raupach said this program is as much about conversation and connection as it is about needle and thread.
“Health and well being is more than nutrition, and it’s more than care of one’s feet. It’s also emotional, psychological,” Raupach said. “It really goes back to our mission, to nourish and nurture people in need. Especially those experiencing poverty and homelessness.”
Raupach told CityBeat this group is growing in numbers, particularly among newcomers.
“We are seeing an increase in the number of people who’ve never experienced homelessness, who’ve never been without shelter, that suddenly are,” Raupach said. “So our population has just become even more diverse than it already was.”
St. Francis Seraph Ministries accepts financial donations, as well as donations of food and socks.