The last time the six women saw the inside of their beloved East Harlem church they were being led out of the house of worship in handcuffs by police.

After their expulsion - the defining moment in the Archdiocese of New York's push last year to shutter several churches - Edward Cardinal Egan ordered that the locks on the doors of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church be changed.

The doors have remained closed to all the congregants since the standoff on Feb. 12, 2007, but every Sunday for the past year, the women and dozens of other faithful have gathered outside to pray.

Group holding services outside Our Lady Queen of Angels includes (from l. to r.) Deliz Rijos, Juanita Ortiz, Patricia Rodriguez, Carmen Villegas Maria Marte and Gladys Mestre-Rivera.

"It hurts because this was like my second home," said Gladys Mestre-Rivera, a mother of two who celebrated her First Communion in the church about 50 years ago and often looks at her son's wedding and baptismal photos to see the sanctuary.

The archdiocese has a handful of nuns living in the E. 113th St. building and a 24-hour security detail protects the structure - arguably from those who love it the most.

"What are they protecting against? Who are they protecting against?" said Patricia Rodriguez, 44, who leads the outdoor services. "You would imagine after two or three months they would see we're not knocking the door down, we just want to pray."

Every Sunday, the women - including a chef, a hospital administrator and a cashier - join 40 others for Mass on the sidewalk.

The women had celebrated Communions, confirmations, their children's baptisms, their marriages and parents' funerals at Our Lady Queen of Angels.

They were the choir members, the lectors, the fund-raisers, the ecumenical ministers before it shut down.

When they were arrested, they were dismissed by the pastor as "a few misguided parishioners" in a letter he wrote upon the church's closing.

"We were the ministers, the ones doing the religious education, how misguided can we be?" said Carmen Villegas, 53, who joined the church when she moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a teen.

The criminal charges were dropped before the women ever went to court. The archdiocese, however, has not backed down from its decision to close the church.

Egan refused to open the doors so the parishioners could hold a funeral Mass inside for one of the women who was arrested last year. The funeral for 72-year-old Carmen Gonzalez went on outside, on the sidewalk, in the heat of summer, just as Christmas Mass was celebrated outside in the cold of winter.

Carmen Gonzalez

The archdiocese also has shown no interest in the women's plan for how they could manage the church's finances independently.

"The realignment was not a question of money, it was a question of having our resources, our resources of people, used most effectively," said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

He said the archdiocese initially planned to have a youth group use the church and celebrate Mass on Sundays. But after the parishioners pledged to hold 24-hour services in the church to keep it open - leading to the arrests - officials decided they could not keep Our Lady Queen of Angels open.

"We had hoped to have been able to work with the people for a smooth transition, to have them bring their enthusiasm and gifts to a new parish," Zwilling said. "But after their decision to occupy the church and refusal to leave, and their continued protest of the decision, it makes further discussion really impossible."

Even when the nuns living inside the church rectory hold a service in the sanctuary, the former parishioners are not allowed inside.
Rodriguez said when she leads the sidewalk services, she often imagines standing in the church - surrounded by the mural of the Virgin Mary, the old pipe organ and the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that to her seemed "alive, almost."

"It's all about business," she said. "The business should be God, but it's not."

dblock@nydailynews.com