Catholics Eye Cleveland Closures for National Precedent

Before a recent prayer service in a shuttered Catholic church in Holyoke, Mass., parishioner Victor Anop stood before 120 people and made an urgent announcement:

 

"The Vatican has ordered the bishop of Cleveland to reopen 13 closed churches."

 

"Everybody broke into applause," Anop said in a telephone interview. "People are still talking about it. What happened in Cleveland brings us hope."

 

Catholics fighting church closings across the U.S. are keeping their eyes on the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, where Bishop Richard Lennon was overruled by the Vatican for not properly following church law and procedures on closing churches.

 

Copies of the decrees are circulating throughout the country and even in Canada. Anop and other parishioners of the closed Mater Dolorosa Catholic Church have been holding around-the-clock vigils inside their century-old sanctuary ever since their bishop ordered it closed last June.

 

In July, the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, the same panel that ordered the reopening of Cleveland's churches, said Mater Dolorosa should stay closed. But the Holyoke squatters appealed to the Vatican's supreme court and are awaiting a ruling.