For
nearly 600 consecutive evenings, a group of worshipers has prayed the
rosary outside the locked doors of Our Lady of Peace, a Roman Catholic Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, trying to keep their church alive.
Since their church was shut down in a round of parish mergers in 2015, the group has been fighting to reopen it through prayer vigils and a continued legal appeal before the Vatican.
But the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, has been pursuing a different plan, taking the matter of this East 62nd Street chapel to the pope himself.
On
Sunday, the jewel-box-like sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace was opened
for a Divine Liturgy service, a weekly sacrament of communion, but not a
Roman Catholic one.
At Cardinal Dolan’s direction, the archdiocese has
granted a one-year lease to the local parish of the Coptic Orthodox
Church, an ancient Christian denomination based in Egypt.
The lease is
the first stage of a plan to transform the church into the Coptic
Church’s New York cathedral, an idea that both Cardinal Dolan and Coptic
leaders say Pope Francis has blessed.
Last April in Rome, Cardinal Dolan introduced Pope Francis to Bishop David, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese
of New York and New England. They raised the idea of selling the
Manhattan church to the Coptic faith, which has a history of persecution
in the Middle East, the archdiocese said.
The
Pope of the Coptic Church, Tawadros II, subsequently emailed Pope
Francis to speed the sale and received a note in reply blessing it,
Bishop David said in an interview.
The deal was announced to the former parishioners of Our Lady of Peace by letter at their new church, St. John the Evangelist-Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church.
The letter, from the archdiocese, was read aloud during Masses on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12.
“Pope
Francis was delighted to learn that your parish, together with the
archdiocese, was interested in assisting the Coptic Orthodox Church in
this way,” the letter to parishioners said.
But
the former parishioners of Our Lady of Peace were shocked to learn that
their church, founded by Italian immigrants, was on the agenda of popes
while their legal appeal was still active.
“We
are like the first wife in a broken marriage who has been rejected for
someone else and left out in the cold,” said Janice Dooner Lynch, whose
family has belonged to the parish since 1921. “That’s how the
archdiocese has treated us.”
She added, “My family’s whole spiritual history is with that church.”
Tami
Ellen McLaughlin, 51, who led eight other parishioners in the 30-minute
rosary on the sidewalk on Friday, said: “Why the rush? Why during Lent?
Why now?
“Does Pope Francis really know what’s going on?” Ms. McLaughlin continued. “We have our doubts.”
There
was overwhelming joy on Sunday at the Coptic Church service, where
silver cymbals played a beat during communion and the smiling bishop
sprinkled holy water at the back pews.
But Father Gregory Saroufeem, 38,
the priest of St. Mary & St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church, said last
week that the sadness of the holdout parishioners also made the move
“bittersweet.”
The
St. Mary & St. Mark parish was founded by first-generation
Egyptian-Americans in 1999; English is its main liturgical language. It
has been holding services in apartments and rented spaces since its
founding and attracts about 200 worshipers each week — mainly young
professionals, students and young families.
“We
completely understand and get what they are going through because we
were also without a home,” Father Gregory said. “But in terms of what is
happening on the side of the Catholic Church, that is definitely an
internal issue that they have to resolve together.”
Mickey
Riad, who is on the board of the Manhattan Coptic parish, said the
archdiocese had shown the parishioners four buildings. They selected Our
Lady of Peace even though they were told that a legal dispute was
underway and that “it could take a few years for it to happen,” he said.
Bishop
David, who led the three-hour Divine Liturgy service on Sunday in
glittering gold and red velvet robes, told the congregation that a
Coptic cross was on the top of the church’s exterior facade, which he
took as a sign that their arrival was meant to be.
“The
pope already gave the consent; that is the most important thing,” he
said after the service. “Because he feels that the Egyptian community is
a suffering community, a persecuted community, and he wants to help
us.”
Still,
canon law experts said it was highly unusual for the New York
archdiocese to lease the church when an appeal was pending before the
Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court.
“Most
bishops would let the status quo remain during the appeal,” said
Nicholas P. Cafardi, dean emeritus and canon law professor of the
Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh. “That’s the normal
practice.”
He added that the pope’s blessing did not mean the matter was decided because popes as a rule do not overrule their own court.
“You
can’t describe things to the pope in social situations and derive a
juridical result from that,” Mr. Cafardi said. “It’s not fair to the
pope, to the church’s legal system or the parties involved.”
The
former parishioners of Our Lady of Peace have argued that the
archdiocese had no reason to close their church because it was
financially healthy and had a vibrant congregation of about 400
parishioners.
The
parishioners said they planned to continue to pray their nightly rosary
outside of the church. Bishop David said that once the Coptic Church
took possession of the title of the church, they would be permitted to
worship each night inside and could hold one Catholic Mass per week, but
he said that could not happen before the sale.
“We hope that they will feel welcome here and that their prayers have been answered,” said Mr. Riad, the church board member.
Jessica
Bede, 65, who helps organize the rosary services, said that “it would
be wonderful if they said, ‘Oh, the church is open. Why don’t you come
inside and don’t freeze?’” But she warned that she would not give up the
fight for the church until the last avenue of appeal was exhausted.
“Our
intent is to have something more than a Mass once a week and a place to
stop by and pray,” Ms. Bede said. “Our intent is to have a church where
all of our sacraments would be available to us.”