NEW YORK (RNS) — Around 20 parishioners gathered at the Jesuit Community Chapel in Brooklyn on Thursday evening (July 3). The chairs were arranged in a circle, and the mood was purposeful but warm. Two community members acted as translators in Creole and in Spanish as organizers took turns standing to speak.
The group, part of a growing resistance to the planned closure of St. Teresa of Avila Church in Crown Heights, has held weekly meetings since early June, when the church’s rector, Fr. Christopher Heanue, read aloud a letter from their bishop announcing the closing of the church. The ad hoc committee, made up largely of longtime Brooklyn residents within this Caribbean-American community, is determined to fight for a church many members have called home for decades.
“God’s house must always prevail, particularly in these times when people have nothing,” said Denise Caldwell, a longtime parishioner and a co-chair of the group formed to reverse the Bishop’s decision. They have been meeting in the Jesuit Community Chapel, about a half mile away from St. Teresa of Avila, because, Caldwell said, “we were locked out of the church.”
On the first Sunday of June, Pentecost Sunday, Bishop Robert J. Brennan wrote a letter to the church “to share the difficult news that we have determined that the c …