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RELIGION BRIEFING
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But the meeting broke down within moments. The facilitators were unable to generate any discussion of the mechanics of merger; one after another, parishioners, most of them elderly, lifelong Catholics, rose to denounce the closure plan and vowed not to abandon their church.
"If I have to sit on the front step and put on a hunger strike, I'll do it," 85-year-old Anthony LaRocca, a parishioner for 60 years, told the facilitators. "We're not moving, and that's final."
Archbishop Alfred Hughes has ordered that St. Henry be closed and merged with two nearby parishes. The archdiocese says it can no longer staff small, closely spaced parishes because of a growing shortage of priests.
But parishioner Alden Hagardorn and other lay leaders have asked Hughes and his aides to consider alternative solutions, including a cluster arrangement in which the three parishes remain open under some kind of priest-sharing arrangement.
Hagardorn and others have said the archdiocese has refused even to acknowledge the suggestions, much less discuss them, which has infuriated parishioners all the more.
-- Religion News Service
COPTIC CHRISTIAN
U.S. Appeals Court Reviewing Deportation
Lawyers for a Coptic Christian are asking a U.S. court to consider his claim that he would be tortured if he's sent back to his native Egypt.
Sameh Khouzam, a Coptic Christian who was convicted in absentia of killing a woman in 1998, says he was beaten and sodomized for refusing to convert to Islam in Egypt.
His attorneys say he's innocent of the murder.
