as a City Landmark in 1976 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The church is located on the outskirts of the former site of the infamous Pruitt–Igoe housing complex. The church continued to serve the Polish Catholic community in St. Louis even as the community dispersed from the surrounding neighborhood. By the 1950s it had lost most of its local parishioners, but continued to receive ethnic support. By the 1970s, the parish buildings were severely deteriorating. The parishioners undertook a large-scale restoration of the church building and began acquiring land surrounding the church. Later improvements included the construction of a Polish Heritage Center. By 2005, the church assets included of land, and the board of trustees estimated the total value of the parish assets at $9.5 million. Conflict with archdiocese The controversy, involving both the control of the physical and financial assets of the parish and the administrative authority of the archbishop, focused on whether those assets would be controlled by a pastor appointed by the archbishop, which is the current canonical norm in the United States, or by a lay board of directors, a practice known as trusteeism. The controversy began under Cardinal John J. Glennon and continued under the late Cardinal Joseph Ritter and his successors, Archbishop John May, Cardinal Justin Rigali, and Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke. Archbishop Robert James Carlson endeavored to find an adequate compromise that would satisfy canon law and all concerned parties, but the breakaway members rejected his proposal. The current structure of the parish derives from one created in 1891. The parish board took the position that the purpose of Burke's actions was to take control of the assets of the parish primarily for economic reasons. Members noted that the parish had sustained and restored itself without financial assistance from the Archdiocese and claimed that Burke intended to close the parish once he had control of it. The archdiocese, as a rebuttal, alleged that the lay board of directors, in the early 1980s, without permission from then-Archbishop May, changed the original 1891 bylaws, which stipulated that the lay board was to function solely as an advisory body to the pastor and thus under the archbishop (cf. the Plenary Councils of Baltimore). In the bylaws as amended, the authority of the pastor was revoked, putting the lay board in full control of the parish. In response, not long after