Bell tolls in Haddon Twp.

The church door hung open as parishioners filed out, letting a cold wind into the lobby of St. Vincent Pallotti Church in Haddon Township. Ann Marie Flamini commiserated with friends - words such as unbelievable and disgraceful carrying over the din of the exiting crowd.

"I'll come here as long as they keep the doors open, but eventually they're going to close the church. It could be a few months, a year, who knows?" said Flamini, a township resident. "We're very bitter. It's made a lot of us lose faith in the hierarchy, in the bishop."

Almost two years after Bishop Joseph Galante announced consolidation plans for the Camden Diocese - merging 124 parishes from Camden to Cape May into about 70 - St. Vincent Pallotti's popular priest, Msgr. Louis Marucci, is leaving after today to return to his studies at Villanova University.

With his departure begins the 47-year-old church's merger with St. Aloysius in Oaklyn, a decision Marucci frequently criticized.

The 50-year-old priest declined to comment further for this article, explaining that he "didn't want to say anything directly or indirectly that would impact the merger."

While the diocese maintains that St. Vincent Pallotti will remain open, as an auxiliary worship site, many parishioners are suspicious and continue to fight the merger in the courts.

Last month, they sued for the more than $1 million they spent two years ago to renovate the church hall and rectory. Now, they are waiting to hear if the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, the Catholic Church's highest court, will hear their petition challenging Galante's decision.

The crux of the dispute is not Galante's decision to merge parishes. Attendance at Masses in the United States has been declining since the 1960s, and consolidation is a generally accepted response to half-full pews and skimpy collection baskets.

What surprised St. Vincent Pallotti parishioners was that their church was listed to close when Galante made his announcement in April 2008.

"It was supposed to be this church that would be the seat of the two parishes," said John Canuso, a prominent developer who led the church renovations. "We have the space, the parking, a very dynamic priest who has created all the ministries and other things the diocese says they want to see. We've never received a plausible explanation for why."

Galante has said the decision was primarily based on his desire to maintain a church at the north end of the White Horse Pike, a busy thoroughfare through the center of Camden County.

Diocese spokesman Andrew Walton said the mergers would inevitably stir emotions.

"There is a natural desire to hold on to what we had," he said. "Our parishes and schools were established at a very different time. It's difficult to adjust and adapt to these new circumstances."

But with the realities setting in, some members of St. Vincent Pallotti are going on the attack, as speculation persists about Galante's reasons for not selecting the church as the parish seat.

In a confidential 2008 report assessing St. Vincent Pallotti and St. Aloysius, which Galante commissioned and which was acquired by The Inquirer, St. Vincent Pallotti ranked higher in almost every category. As a result, many in the parish believe the decision was based on a desire to sell for development the $27.2 million property on which the church sits.

Typically, a parish owns the church's land, but in St. Vincent Pallotti's case, the diocese owns the land and the parish owns the church and rectory, meaning the two entities would share the proceeds if the property were sold.

"All the reasons the bishop has given are laughable. The only explanation that makes sense is he wants the land," said John Hargrave, a lawyer and chairman of the parish finance committee.

Walton denied that allegation, pointing out that "the bishop specifically announced last year that St. Vincent Pallotti will remain open to serve the new parish."

Beyond St. Vincent Pallotti, the diocese is trying to reinvigorate its mission when getting young Catholics to church is becoming harder and harder. To that end, it is proposing expanding its ministries in areas such as charitable service and Bible studies, and hiring professional staff to help priests in that mission.

"You can't carry it out exclusively with volunteers," Walton said. "What we're trying to do is create a more dynamic parish in very difficult times."

While the consolidation has generated strong criticism, it has received support from those who see it as a necessary step to deal with the diocese's dramatic drop in men entering the priesthood - 43 percent between 1995 and 2009. In an independent 2008 survey, 72 percent of priests in the diocese said they supported Galante's plan and 19 percent were neutral.

But the last two years have left many hurt feelings, and a number of parishioners at St. Vincent Pallotti said they would likely look for another parish.

Marianne Delengowski of Haddonfield, who has attended St. Vincent Pallotti for a year and a half, said she believed there would be a "caravan to St. Andrews" in Gibbsboro, where Marucci is scheduled to occasionally lead Mass now that he's without a parish.

Delengowski's husband, Walt, a mechanical engineer, was laid off last year from Sunoco's Eagle Point oil refinery in Gloucester County, but was recruited by Marucci to help upgrade St. Vincent Pallotti's heating system.

"There's a few other engineers who go here. We put in a new boiler system, and our heating costs are down about 50 percent," he said. "I've never been in a parish like this where everyone's so close. It's a shame what's happened."