CLEVELAND (OH)
Myrtle Beach Sun
By RALPH VARTABEDIAN – Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — When groups of ethnic Polish, Slovene, Slovak and Hungarian Catholics in Cleveland began protesting orders by their local bishop that closed their churches, they were given little chance of reversing the decision.
The churches were shuttered in a massive retrenchment of Cleveland’s urban core in 2010, striking at the Slavic and other ethnic European congregations that were founded by waves of immigrants from the wars and humanitarian catastrophes over the last century. The parishes claimed that Bishop Richard Lennon, head of the Cleveland diocese, had begun an attack on the ethnic churches.
But after two years of sidewalk vigils, letter-writing campaigns and legal action at the Vatican, the parishioners appear to have won a historic victory against their local diocese. A Vatican court, the Congregation of the Clergy, has ordered as many as 13 of the shuttered churches reopened.
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