Word that the Jesuits have sold the St. Ignatius Retreat House in North Hills has sent a chill throughout the Catholic community on Long Island.
It isn’t just that the church is unloading a piece of underused real estate. The implications go far beyond that.
The 87-room retreat house, named “Inisfada” after the Gaelic word for “Long Island,” has been a part of local history for nearly 100 years. The house was built for $2.3 million between 1916-1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady and his wife Genevieve, who also had residences in Manhattan and Rome.
Just 10 years before the Great Depression, this was unimaginable excess.
Following her death in 1938, Genevieve Brady left Inisfada to the Jesuit order, which used the Searingtown Road property as a seminary and retreat house for regional parishes and faith-based addiction help support groups.
Recently Rev. Vincent Cooke told our reporter that the property was sold by the Manhasset Bay Group Inc. for $36.5 million. But he won’t say to whom the beloved Inisfada was sold or for what purpose.
“I really can’t tell you anything else,” Cooke said.
It is safe to assume that Inisfada had become a money drain. In 1965 there were 48,992 Catholic seminarians in America. In 2012 there were 4,719.
That’s a 90 percent decrease. In that same period there was a 50 percent decrease in diocesan high schools and an 85 percent decrease in teaching priests.
SnyergyFirst International, a Brooklyn-based health-care provider that wanted to buy the 300-acre property and maintain it as a retreat, tried to challenge the Jesuits in Nassau County Supreme Court last week in an effort to prevent the sale.
Synergy made a $36 million cash offer on the property last month on the condition that the Jesuit order restore the St. Genevieve Chapel, which had been removed shortly after the retreat house closed.
Village of North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss said the buyer wants to build condominiums on the property and turn it into “the jewel of North Hills.”
It’s their property and the Jesuits have every right to sell it.
But it is sad that they don’t seem to realize that Inisfada is part of Long Island history.
And it’s even sadder that Cooke thinks he doesn’t need to tell the community what’s going on. Genevieve would not be happy.
