NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter
by Jamie Manson | Jan. 9, 2013
Carmen Villegas occupied the church years before “occupy” became a movement.
Six years ago, she and a group of parishioners made local headlines when they protested the closing of Our Lady Queen of Angels, a church that had served their East Harlem community since 1886. The parish was among 21 churches and nine schools in the Archdiocese of New York that were casualties of Cardinal Edward Egan’s cost-saving closures in 2007.
When almost 40 parishioners assembled for a peaceful witness on the sidewalk outside of the church on East 113th Street on the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, the archdiocese saw fit to send in private security guards to “protect” the church from its lifelong members. …
The Gonzalez family petitioned the archdiocese to again reopen the church for one day in order to honor their mother’s last request to have her funeral held in the parish she called home for more than 50 years. But Egan refused.
Rather than have their mother’s funeral at a church she did not know, the Gonzalez family held her funeral on the sidewalk outside of Our Lady Queen of Angels. Renowned mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, a member of the parish who passed away in May 2012, was among many mourners to speak at the streetside service.
“Church is not a building. Church is the community,” Isasi-Diaz said. “We take very literally the teaching that the church is a community of the believers.”
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