AUBURN — Saint Dominic Academy parent Sean Andrews has petitioned Bishop James Ruggieri of the Portland Diocese to reverse his decision to close the high school, arguing that Ruggieri violated the Roman Catholic Church’s Canon Law when he announced the school’s closure March 28.

Andrews has children in the Saint Dominic school system and is also a member of the new board established after the high school closure was announced. The board hopes to reopen the high school after the upcoming school year and make it a privately operated Catholic high school.

A news release issued by the board about Andrews’ petition claims the diocese did not consult parents, community members directly harmed by the school closure and the Presbyteral Council, nor did the bishop issue a formal decree required when churches or parishes are closed.

Saint Dominic Regional High School board member Susan Young explained that the St. Dom’s high school had a chapel in it where people would gather for a weekly Mass, making the school a place of worship.

Closing the school the way the diocese did, Young said, violated Canon Law — a set of laws and regulations that govern internal affairs in the Catholic Church.

Andrews is asking the bishop to reverse his decision to close the school and to work with the new board to form a Catholic high school recognized by the Catholic Church. Because the proposed new high school will not be directly operated by the Catholic Church or a parish, the new board needs permission from the bishop to call itself a formal Catholic school, Young said.

“We remain united, hopeful, and ready to prove how much our high school means to generations of students and the entire Lewiston/Auburn community,” the new board posted on its Facebook page Monday.

A formal decree includes the reasons for a church’s closure and instructions on how a parish can challenge the decision, Young said. Because there was no decree issued, members of the Saint Dominic community did not know that they had just 10 days to formally challenge the bishop’s decision.

“As a result of failing to issue a formal decree — without all of that information about how we could go about challenging, what our rights were as a congregation — we had no idea how to challenge it,” she said.

The bishop has 90 days to respond to the petition. After that, the petitioner can bring his case to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Catholic Education and ask that it force the bishop to revoke his decision, though it is unclear exactly what that would look like, Young said. Processes like this usually take a while to work their way through the Catholic Church.

“The Catholic Church’s wheels tend to run rather slowly and deliberately,” Young said.

The diocese maintains that the bishop followed proper Canon Law processes when it announced the school’s closure, according to a public statement posted on its website Wednesday.

While the board hopes the diocese reverses its decision, the petition was specifically filed by Andrews. Young said she believes only an aggrieved person can petition the bishop about a decision to close a church.

In its Wednesday statement, the diocese said it received the petition from the new high school board, but members of the board said that is not accurate and that Andrews is the sole petitioner, Young said.

Canon lawyer Laura Morrison said she only represents Andrews, not the board. The petition he submitted, however, includes many stories from community members about how they have been impacted by the high school’s closure.

Monday’s post on the new school board’s Facebook page used “we” pronouns that made it sound like the board submitted the petition.

“Today we’ve taken a critical step in our fight to restore our beloved high school,” the board’s Facebook statement starts out.

The board has since clarified the post to make it reflect that the board did not bring the petition forward.

Despite that, the dioceses said Thursday that “the Mandate of Appointment — which accompanied the petition — and its signee, led us to firmly conclude the petition is on behalf of the independent board.”

The Mandate of Appointment provided by Morrison to the Sun Journal did not mention the Saint Dominic Regional High School board anywhere in it. It states that Andrews is appointing Morrison and Silvia Pavone as canonical council.

The new Saint Dominic Regional High School board was established in the weeks after the diocese announced the school closure and had put forward several offers to the diocese to operate the school in the upcoming school year.

The diocese had issued several conditions that it wanted the new board to meet before it agreed to operate the school for a “bridge year,” stipulations that proved to be too steep for the new board to meet in such a short time period, though it raised more than $1 million in donations and pledges in a matter of weeks.

Now the new board is working to open and operate the high school as a private Catholic school, with the goal of opening after the upcoming school year. It recently filed paperwork to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Everyone in the Lewiston/Auburn Catholic community and the diocese wants the best for local students, Young said. Members of the local community have no interest in a confrontation with the diocese, she said.

The only other Catholic high school in Maine is Cheverus in Portland and many families cannot afford the tuition at that school or to transport students that far away, she said.

The board and members of the Saint Dominic community are hopeful that both sides can have respectful dialogue and come to an agreement that results in continuing to offer a local Catholic high school in the central Maine community, she said.

“I would say our message is, ‘Let’s do what’s right for our kids. Let’s create educational opportunities for our kids,’” she said. “That’s our bottom line.”