Reported on Aug. 23, 2009

Patty Rodriguez helped unfold the plastic chairs and arranged them in seven rows of four. Then she glanced at some excerpts from the Bible, which she later read aloud in both Spanish and English.

“We’re here every Sunday at 10:30,” said Rodriquez, 46, as she stood on the steps in front of Our Lady Queen of Angels, a reddish-brown church on East 113th Street between Second and Third avenues. “It’d be great to be inside and have a priest and hold a Mass and receive first communion. But we haven’t lost anything spiritually by being outside.”

When Rodriguez attended Mass at the 123-year-old East Harlem church two and a half years ago, it was a service like any other. But on Feb. 12, 2007, Rodriguez and five others refused to leave the church after the Archdiocese of New York closed it down. They were handcuffed, dragged out and thrown in jail for trespassing.

“They decided we had too many churches in the neighborhood, so they had to get rid of one,” said Gladys Mestre-Rivera, one of the six handcuffed women. “We feel like the churches are being run like banks. You know how they close banks and consolidate? That’s what they wanted us to do. But we refused to close, and we refused to join another church.”

To address the decreasing population of churchgoers, the archdiocese closed Our Lady Queen of Angels in 2007 along with three other churches in New York City. So for the past 133 weeks, Rodriguez and Mestre-Rivera have led outdoor Sunday services for as many as 50 parishioners near the front steps of the church’s locked doors.

But the group was hoping for change this summer after Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan succeeded Cardinal Edward Michael Egan as Archbishop of New York on April 15.

“We thought the new archbishop would give us some hope, but now we don’t know,” said Carmen Villegas, 53, another one of the six women who were arrested. “We’re waiting, and we want to meet with him.”

The core women who attend the Sunday services sent a letter to Dolan, who quickly responded.

“He said he reviewed the letter and finds no reason to overturn the decision made by the former archbishop,” said Rodriguez. “So we just sent another letter, asking to open another dialogue. We’re waiting to hear back.”

Parishioners at Our Lady of Vilnius Church, a Lithuanian church in SoHo that closed a few weeks after Our Lady Queen of Angels, have similarly refused to leave. Rodriguez said they’ve heard back from the archbishop.

“He said he’d be happy to speak with them about Lithuanian issues, but he wouldn’t discuss the closing of the church,” said Rodriguez. “So that’s what we think we’re going to hear.”

Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese, said the chance of reopening is nil.

“If circumstances change in the community and there’s need for a church there, we would certainly look at it,” said Zwilling. “But at this present time I don’t see a set of circumstances for that parish church to reopen as a parish church.

There are no plans to sell the church, according to Zwilling.

Leaders of the group feel that their experiences over the past few years have been a blessing in disguise.

“This has brought us together,” said Mestre-Rivera, referring to the parishioner-led Sunday services. “We always knew each other, but there was a little division. Now we all work together to create these spiritual services.”

And Villegas, who reads the reflections in both Spanish and English, agrees.

“We are those chosen people that God has put forth to fight this fight that we have,” said Villegas, during a service.

Luz Alvarez, a parishioner who attends every Sunday service, brought several women to tears when she pointed to the church’s locked doors.

“Even though we’re not in there, we’re out here,” said Alvarez, while crying. “God put forth this tribulation to prove the strength of our community. And you know what, I’m glad he did.”