Results tagged “romancatholicarchdiocese”

The Manhattan District Attorney's office announced that the Reverend David Ajemian was arrested on charges of stalking and threatening Conan O'Brien. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston placed Ajemian, a 46-year-old priest in Stoneham, Massachusetts, on leave. The DA's office says that Ajemian had sent letters (some on parish letterhead!) to O'Brien's offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and home, contacted his parents, and tried to attend tapings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He was...

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese's decision to close a number of city churches may have been inevitable, but it doesn't make for very good PR for the Catholic Church, especially when you see distraught parishioners being led from a church, handcuffed for trespassing. Last night, six female parishioners at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in East Harlem were arrested after holding a vigil to protest the church's closure. One of the parishioners, Carmen Villegas, told WABC 7, "If you experience going to your home, and that your locks have been changed, you feel that you have been evicted from your home. So when I saw the changing of those locks, I feel evicted from my home."

That's the headline in both the Post and the News today. In a long-expected announcement yesterday the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York issued their final list of parishes that they are closing. A total of twenty-one parishes in the Archdiocese, which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and several upstate counties, will be closed. Ten parishes will be shut down completely while eleven others will be merged with neighboring parishes.

As we mentioned yesterday in Extra, Extra, this week brought Manhattan preservationists some bad news and some bad news with a side of hope.

Looks like St. Brigid was just the beginning...