The message of white supremacist fliers left on cars parked overnight in Greenpoint is protected under the First Amendment, but their message leaves some uneasy. Photo: Mark Lungariello

Reported on June 18, 2011

White supremacist fliers found in Greenpoint last month may have ruffled some feathers, but their message is protected under the First Amendment, officials say.

On the morning of May 25, police found fliers urging whites to “awake” and “save” their “great race,” placed under the windshield wipers of cars parked on Greenpoint Avenue. The 94th Precinct notified the New York Police Department Hate Crimes Unit, which told local officers that since the fliers didn’t mention hate or threaten violence to a specific group they were protected under the right to free speech. Brooklyn Community Board 1 members said this week that the investigation was closed.

Mieszko Kalita, owner of Beata Deli on Manhattan Avenue and chairman of the community board’s public safety committee, said there was no evidence to suggest a racist movement is afoot in the neighborhood. “It’s a first time and may just be a single occurrence,” he said, adding that it was quite possible the fliers were left by a single individual. “If there’s a second time, it will raise eyebrows and cause concern.”

Officer Steve Truglio of the 94th Precinct said the distribution appeared to have been minimal, adding police weren’t aware of any further circulation of the fliers.

The fliers promoted the Creativity Movement, a national supremacist group that bills itself as religious. A spokesman for the New York chapter of the group, who calls himself Brother Joseph Adams, said he couldn’t discuss the number of members in New York City and wasn’t aware of any recruitment push in Greenpoint. But Adams, who was interviewed over the phone after being contacted through the group’s website, said members are encouraged to use fliers to get their message out. He said the group wouldn’t officially take credit for this incident though, since members are asked to respect city litter laws, which prohibit leaving fliers on cars.

Adams said Creativity Movement does not condone violence in support of its message, and in fact has a “love first” mantra for whites. But the nontheistic group, Adams said, doesn’t exactly have a “turn the other cheek” attitude. “Yes, we hate our enemies,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Loving your enemies would be suicidal.”

Members of the church, formerly known as the Church of the Creator, have been involved in violent crimes across the country since the movement formed in 1973. Matt Hale, the national leader of the church in the 1990s, is currently in an Illinois prison, accused of soliciting the murder of a judge who was presiding over a case involving Hale. “We can’t babysit each member,” Adams said. “Any religion […] has violence.”

Kalita, the public safety committee chair, made light of the situation. A native of Poland, Kalita said he respects all religions practiced in the United States but noted he was only in fourth grade when Creativity Movement formed in 1973. “I have problems with religions younger than myself,” he said.

But to Rabbi Maurice Appelbaum of Greenpoint Shul, the fliers aren’t a laughing matter. “I do think the police should take this very seriously, it shouldn’t be swept under the carpet,” he said. Appelbaum, leader of the only synagogue in the neighborhood, said that most residents he has spoken to are unified in their disgust over the fliers. “We have a lot of different subgroups, but there’s a lot of respect between them,” the rabbi said.

Robin Levy, assistant regional director of the New York branch of the Anti-Defamation League, said though the fliers don’t imply violence, they were an eye-opener. “It’s a constant reminder that hate still exists, even in diverse New York,” she said.

On Sunday afternoons when the Morristown Farmers Market closes, several vendors donate their unsold fresh fruits, vegetables and breads to the Community Soup Kitchen.

MORRISTOWN, N.J.—Morristown Farmers Market fresh fruits, crisp vegetables and savory bread are new, healthful options for Community Soup Kitchen visitors for the first time in its 25-year history.

When 300 daily visitors arrive for a hot lunch at the soup kitchen’s dining room, they can also shop for fresh produce and bread to prepare their own meals at home. Five farmers and a baker are donating their unsold food each Sunday afternoon when the farmers market closes.

The donation drive, which started in June, grew out of the soup kitchen’s “Healthy Choice” program, an initiative started in 2009 to bring healthier food choices to the soup kitchen guests. It was made possible through a grant from the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation of Morristown. In what seems to be a growing national trend, vendors are donating their unsold food from farmers markets to soup kitchens.

“Tomatoes, corn, zucchini, peaches—typical farmers market fare. We have four, five sometimes six tables filled with hundreds of pounds of food each day for guests to take home,” said Lois Nichols, assistant director of the Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Program.  The nonprofit organization rents space from two churches on South Street to host the soup kitchen and its outreach services arm that began six years ago. Organizers also host educational workshops on healthful food preparation; the most recent one was on how to make a vegetable casserole.

Participants in the market’s donation program include Baker’s Bounty in Union County, E.R. & Son Organic Farm in Middlesex County, Grossman Farms in Mercer County, Michisk Farms and Pittstown Fruit Farms in Hunterdon County and Union Hill Farms in Morris County. People can also donate at the market by dropping purchased items into the Community Soup Kitchen’s container.

While vendors do not get money for unsold items, a good feeling comes from the experience. Kim LaPrete, owner of Baker’s Bounty, said, “It’s nice to know that it’s going to a good cause.” Through its participation in the Union Square Green Market in Manhattan, LaPrete’s company also donates to City Harvest, which facilitates food donations to food pantries and soup kitchens throughout New York City.

Marla Drury, director of development and community outreach at the Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Program, said Morristown Memorial Hospital nurses conducted free health screenings during the past five years and determined that 80 percent of the soup kitchen’s visitors have health issues such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

“The nurses explained to our volunteers the huge connection between food choices and the well-being of our guests,” Drury said, acknowledging that it is “more expensive to buy fresh produce and easier and faster to pop open canned food.” The grant money and educational component of the program is helping with these issues, she said.

For the second year, the Minneapolis Farmers Market is donating its leftover bounty to a local soup kitchen and other nonprofits. In the first three weeks of this market’s season, 18,737 pounds of produce were collected–4,312 pounds more than in the same period last year, according to its website.

In 2009, vendors at a farmers market in Bridgeport, Conn., donated more than 10,000 pounds of end-of-day produce to a local soup kitchen and a family re-entry program that helps people released from prison begin their lives anew.

The Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Program in Morristown operates six days a week at the Church of the Redeemer and on Saturdays at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Thirty-two religious establishments and corporations supply the daily meals and volunteer servers to the area’s homeless, working poor and elderly.

More stories by Stacey

Produced by Sonia Dasgupta and Stephanie Marcus

Around 40 Muslims from five mosques in the Bronx will make the pilgrimage to Mecca as a group in mid-November, in an attempt to lower travel and accommodation costs and allow more people to afford the trip.

“It’s even cheaper this year,” said Abdul Muhaimin Ladan, one of the imam’s assistants at Mount Hope Masjid, a mosque in the southwest of the borough.

Abdul Muhaimin Ladan counts the passports his fellow Muslims will need for the journey to the Mecca on Nov. 15. Photo: Delphine Reuter

Ladan, 42, will supervise the pilgrimage with Mousa Wage, an imam from Highbridge. He said that while the Mount Hope mosque has 400 members, only 12 of them will join the 40-member group traveling to Saudi Arabia for the hajj.

There, they will perform century-old rites like walking seven times around the Kaaba, a shrine covered in a black cloth, located in Mecca, one of the three spiritual capitals of Islam along with Jerusalem and Medina. The Saudi Embassy Web site stated on Nov. 3 that around 250,000 pilgrims had already reached Mecca. Around four million of them are expected from all over the world. The Bronx delegation will gather Muslims from Highbridge, White Plains, and from one mosque in Chicago – headed by Ladan’s cousin.

Ladan said he and Wage will offer three packages this year with the cheapest one costing $4,000, whereas last year the same basic trip would have cost up to $4,500. The price covers the flight, transportation, food and special pilgrimage clothes for the three-week stay.

It is difficult to find a hajj for less than $4,000 on the Internet, and one California organizer even offered a $12,000 package. Ladan explained that the closer the hotel is to Mecca, the higher the cost. This means that the pilgrims who pay the least have to travel the most every day. Ladan was able to offer a cheaper package this year by booking a hotel further away from the center of Mecca.

For Hajie Tunkara, a member of the Islamic Cultural Center in the South Bronx, who already made the pilgrimage in 2006 and plans to join the group this year, the journey is worth it. Tunkara said he convinced the imam of Highbridge to organize the hajj with Ladan, who studied Islam and used to work as a tour organizer in Saudi Arabia.

“I told him that it is better to go with Abdul,” said Tunkara, 37. “He’s been doing the hajj for the past eight years.”

He added that during the hajj, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. Issah Lamin Yusif, 33, a Quran teacher at Mount Hope mosque, said that the last time he went to Mecca, he spent hours locating his tent among thousands of settlements.

“I would not let my wife go alone,” said Yusif.

Fortunately, while the pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam, attendance is not required. One thirty-four-year-old woman from the Mount Hope mosque, Hawa Jagana, is not planning to make the trip this year because she cannot afford it. Instead, she is saving about $100 a week to do the trip next year.

“You go if you have the money,” she said.

The Finnish Lutheran Church in NYC

The decisions have turned the tide in a legal battle that pitted worshippers at the Futa Islamic Center, who are mostly recent West African immigrants, against local developer Bx Third Avenue Partners. The dispute centered on whether the mosque had been properly notified of foreclosure proceedings against it that resulted in the mosque’s building, located at 3400 Third Ave. in Morrisania, being auctioned off to the developer.

Worshippers at Futa Islamic Center pray at a 2 p.m. prayer service. The mosque is on the brink of victory in a lengthy legal battle to keep control of its building following a disputed foreclosure. Photo: Courtesy of Jeremy Herb/The Bronx Beat.

On May 5, 2009, a five-judge panel unanimously overturned the foreclosure on the mosque. On Oct. 1, the court denied without comment a motion by the developer seeking to re-argue the case. The decisions all but ensured that the Futa Islamic Center will remain in control of the building, unless an unlikely reversal is handed down by the New York State Court of Appeals. Along the way, the struggle to retain a house of worship has inspired a tight-knit West African community’s faith in a very different ideal: the United States system of justice.

“We are poor people, but praise be to Allah, the law prevails,” said Dr. A. Balde, a community leader and member of the mosque. “We thank New York City because they don’t look at race, they don’t look at color, they don’t look at money, they look at the law.”

Joshua Kimerling, the attorney who represented Bx Third Avenue Partners in the appellate court, did not return phone calls seeking comment on the case. Court documents list Kimerling’s client as Ron Gilbert, whose address in state property records is the same as the address provided by Bx Third Avenue Partners. Bx Third Avenue Partners does not list a registered agent or offer contact information.

The mosque initially lost the property as a result of what the mosque’s lawyer, Paul W. Siegert, described as a misunderstanding: its leaders’ mistaken belief that the mosque’s religious status meant that they did not owe city property taxes. As the unpaid taxes piled up, the Bank of New York purchased tax liens, and ultimately foreclosed and auctioned off the property in April 2008. But mosque leaders said that they had been unaware of the taxes and had not received notice of the impending foreclosure.

Siegert said that the initial failure to provide notice to the mosque was what doomed the developer’s bid to keep control of the auctioned property. “They lost the case because the foreclosure wasn’t served properly,” he said.

The mosque’s legal victory capped an emotional struggle for worshippers that included two marches on City Hall and a letter-writing campaign to Congress, said mosque President Ahmadou Diallo. For nearly a year following the foreclosure, the mosque had to pay $5,000 per month in rent to the developer, a sum that it collected largely through small contributions from its members. Since the May 5 decision, the mosque has no longer had to pay rent on the building, said Siegert, although the address remains listed as property of Bx Third Avenue Partners.

Diallo said that the court’s rulings on the dispute sent a message of acceptance and belonging to their community. “It was the first address we had in America,” he said of the building, which the mosque purchased in 2002. “Getting this building back is like, yes, we are here in America.”

According to Siegert, the developer has initiated its final opportunity for appeal, with the Court of Appeals in Albany. Siegert said the court had scheduled a Nov. 9 hearing to address the “purely discretionary” – and in his view, highly unlikely – possibility of considering the developer’s case. He estimated that it would take a month following the hearing for the court to decide whether it will hear the case.

But mosque members are confident that they have prevailed in the dispute, and are determined that the center will be the place for their community to take root and flourish in New York.

“We are standing on solid ground right now,” said assistant imam Mamadou Diallo. “It’s a celebration for us.”

Eric Dunn, 60, knows New York City soup kitchens well. He has been eating in them for more than 10 years.

Gladys Vasquez and Julio Serrano eat lunch at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen on a recent Monday. Photo: Jake Rosenwasser.

“The soup kitchens in Harlem and the Bronx have good food, but they run out of it,” said Dunn, sitting in the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. “This place never runs out. It must be well funded.”

The Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea took in $3 million in 2008, but it too is feeling the effects of the economic downturn. Unprecedented numbers of people were lining up at the soup kitchen even before the financial crisis deepened last fall. Almost a year later, unemployment is up, the stock market is down, and with it, donations are, too. New York State government – a significant source of revenue for the soup kitchen – is looking to cut its budget. Still, every weekday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the soup kitchen serves a meal to everyone who wants one.

There is no limit to the amount of food that guests are allowed to eat at the soup kitchen, located in the Church of the Holy Apostles on the southeast corner of Ninth Avenue and 28th Street.

Dunn sat down on a recent Monday with his tray of macaroni and meatballs, green beans, and rye bread and ate slowly. He finished eating, but was still hungry, so he got back on line, picked up another tray, and sat down at a different table for a second helping, just minutes later.

Some guests of the soup kitchen come back for three or four meals. Other guests empty food into containers to save for later.

Dunn, dressed in construction boots, black jeans, a black T-shirt and a blue baseball cap, wishes the soup kitchen would serve more chicken and ham instead of pasta, but he is satisfied with the food.

“This is one of the better soup kitchens,” Dunn said. “It’s clean.”

Dunn said he comes to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen on most weekdays. He said he goes to the Lower East Side to eat at another soup kitchen on Saturdays, and he goes to St. Francis Xavier Church’s soup kitchen on 15th Street on Sundays.

Dunn sleeps at a New York City shelter. He said he worked for a window installation company a few years ago, but he has been looking for work ever since.

“There aren’t any jobs,” Dunn said.

New York City’s unemployment rate increased to 9.6 percent in July, its highest level since July 1997, according to the state Department of Labor.

New York City emergency food programs served 28 percent more people in 2008 than in 2007, according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. Nearly 69 percent of food pantries and soup kitchens said they did not have enough food to meet demand in 2008, up from 59 percent in 2007.

Leaders of the Church of the Holy Apostles started the soup kitchen in 1982 in response to homeless people knocking on the Episcopal church’s door asking for food. The soup kitchen served 35 meals on its first day, while the country endured another recession.

“The soup kitchen was not originally set up to be a long-term institution,” the Rev. Elizabeth Maxwell, soup kitchen program director, said. “It was an emergency program to deal with a hunger emergency.”

The hunger never abated, and the line at the soup kitchen has continued to swell in 2009. Maxwell said that about 70 percent of the soup kitchen’s guests, or visitors, were homeless, although some of the homeless guests are working.

“I think that the economy is worse now than it was in 1982,” Maxwell said. “I think that more people across the city are feeling it.”

The soup kitchen served an average of 1,260 meals per day in 2008, up 8.7 percent from 2007. It was the most meals the soup kitchen had ever served in its 27-year history.

Maxwell said the pace has kept up in 2009. A line of people forms in front of the church an hour before the doors open.

The soup kitchen took in $3 million through donations and government grants and spent $2.8 million in 2008, but with the sluggish economy, it may not be possible to raise that much money this year.

“This is a very challenging fundraising environment,” Maxwell said. “Our fundraising is down, but the most significant fundraising quarter of the year is the last quarter, so we won’t be able to really tell until the end of the year. But definitely there are some people who are not able to help us as much as they were able to before.”

Maxwell said that foundations – which donated more than $1 million in 2008 – were not able to give as much because the stock market is down.

Funding from government grants could be cut as well. Ten percent of the soup kitchen’s revenues – more than $300,000 – came from New York State in 2008, but a July state budget report revealed that the budget will face a $2.1 billion gap by the end of the fiscal year on March 31.

“Revenues have continued to fall, and this will force us to make further difficult choices,” Gov. David A. Paterson said, in July.

Paterson said that he wants to make spending cuts to bridge the budget gap.

“It’s something that we’re watching with concern,” Maxwell said.

Paterson is planning to unveil an amended budget to the Legislature in September.

“We have no special plan for shortfalls in state funding,” said Neville Hughes, director of development for the soup kitchen. “Rather we have a reserve to cover income shortfalls no matter what the revenue stream.”

Hughes said the reserve ensured that the soup kitchen did not run out of food, but that it was less than $1 million.

“Thus we cannot sustain substantial continuous shortfalls in annual revenue,” Hughes said.

Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, is also worried about state budget cuts. He emphasized the role that government plays in funding soup kitchens and food pantries.

“Charity is not going to solve this problem,” Berg said. “Charity is overwhelmed. It has been overwhelmed for years. The only way we can solve this problem is with serious government leadership.”

Maxwell – who has been at the church for 20 years – said the soup kitchen had faced numerous financial crises over the years.

“There was a time in the early ’90s when we actually laid a couple of people off and really had to do some budget cutting,” Maxwell said. “We’ve really tried to avoid that partly because the budget has remained lean and the staff has remained lean, but I don’t know of any time when the general economic outlook has been like it is now.”

The soup kitchen’s three chefs cook 48 pounds of pasta and 100 pounds of meat, for a typical pasta dish. Seven service assistants and porters clean the church and help with day-to-day tasks and the administrative staff keeps the soup kitchen running behind the scenes.

The soup kitchen used to operate out of a small room in the Mission House, which is adjacent to the church. Guests would eat quickly and file out to make room for others. But after a church fire in 1990, the soup kitchen moved its tables inside the church.

Guests line up, are handed a ticket, pick up a tray of food and a cold drink, and sit down at one of the 120 seats in the 5,550-square-foot nave. The guests sit at circular tables of eight amid the altar, the organ, the stained glass windows and the vestibule. Just beyond the holy water font, volunteers hand out rolls and bagels to guests. The church serves all guests, regardless of their faith, without proselytizing.

“Our religion is all about welcoming all God’s people,” Maxwell said. “We have as the central act of worship, a meal. For us, there’s really a very strong connection between the meal that we celebrate together around the altar on Sunday and the meal that’s served around those tables Monday through Friday.”

The soup kitchen averaged 53 volunteers per day in 2008. They greet guests, wrap napkins around spoons, place food on trays, pour iced tea and lemonade, fill pitchers with milk and water, and dump extra food into the trash.

Mahogany Price, 20, a Buffalo State College student from the Bronx, had nothing to do at the soup kitchen on a recent Monday because so many volunteers showed up.

In addition to serving meals, the soup kitchen offers a range of social services. Counselors give out referrals for haircuts and clothing. The Urban Justice Center offers legal advice every Wednesday, and volunteer chiropractors provide adjustments every Thursday.

“Demand has become so great,” volunteer Marian Kantrowitz said.

But the soup kitchen is holding on. It still serves a meal five days a week.

“Are we still functioning? Absolutely,” Maxwell said. “Are we worried? Yes, we are.”

A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a newly constructed flood home. Not a prelude to a punch line, such a scenario would mean the conclusion of two years of pain for Linda Albert.

Habitat for Humanity volunteer Bernard Breninkmeier cuts out space for a window in Linda Albert's new flood home on Aug. 7, 2009. Photo: Paige Rentz

“I want all nationality ministers to come out and bless the house, all the different faiths to come out and bless the house together,” said Albert, who does not identify with a particular religious institution.

The rising waters of the Mamaroneck River destroyed Albert’s home in 2007. Every building on her block was severely damaged, but Albert’s home—built at a bend in the river—suffered the worst damage and was condemned.

When the village of Mamaroneck was declared a national disaster area, the Habitat for Humanity swooped down on Albert’s neighborhood and immediately set to work to help restore residents’ lives as quickly as possible.

Now, Habitat for Humanity is building an energy efficient flood home for Albert and her mother. When the project is complete, Albert will invite the religious leaders for a blessing of her new house that will unite the community, a move that is precisely in line with the philosophy of the organization that helped her build it.

Habitat was founded on the idea of building through faith. Jim Killoran, director of the Westchester Habitat affiliate, explained, “Whether you believe in the Torah, the Koran or the Bible, they all say ‘love one another,’ and so the theology of the hammer is about us: if all the congregations in Westchester alone built homes together, we would end poverty in seven years here.”

Already, the ecumenical Christian not-for-profit is the nation’s largest private builder of homes, with 5,459 closings last year, according to Builder Magazine. Killoran hopes his affiliate can earn the same title in Westchester County.

His timing couldn’t be better. As Westchester County debates approval of a $50 million settlement with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development requiring 750 affordable housing units be built in seven years, Killoran has been working to beef up his infrastructure here.

Part of Killoran’s plan is to recruit as many faith-based groups as possible to join his cause. For an upcoming drive on Sept. 12-20—Building on Faith Week—congregations are being asked to volunteer or commit to sponsor a home through Habitat.

“In a way, this is a time for their faith in action, their congregations and their mitzvahs and their Christian charities to go shine,” said Killoran. “And we’re blessed that we’ve had mosques and synagogues and churches across the country sponsor homes. “

Killoran believes that part of Habitat’s success will depend on people’s desire to build real community back into Westchester, where the people who work here can afford to live here.

Many of the volunteers working on Albert’s flood home wanted to make a tangible difference in people’s lives.

“I wanted to do something that was good for the community,” said Matt Fishman, 15.

Adam Rosen agreed. The Brandeis University senior said, “It was kind of cool just to see the houses as the final product and all the hard work we put in.”

Albert’s neighbor, Darlene Green, said Habitat’s volunteers were a calming influence, even during a disaster. “Everybody was kind. All the volunteers, the young people, little young girls and boys, they was out here doing what they could.”

“They were so kind, they really made you feel good and they were there really supporting you,” said Albert. “It brought the people together in the neighborhood, and everyone was willing to come and help you. It was really wonderful, full of love.”

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.”

Parents in front of the Church of St. Saviour rally in support of James Flanagan, principal of St. Saviour Elementary School. His contract was not renewed. Photo: courtesy of St. Saviour Preservation Society.

As Church of St. Saviour leadership and upset St. Saviour Elementary School parents remain stalemated over the non-renewal of principal James Flanagan’s contract, a mediation process looms as the next step in an attempt to resolve the impasse.

Ever since news leaked on May 11 that Father Daniel Murphy had informed Flanagan, the school’s principal of 26 years, that his contract would not be renewed, a group of parents has mobilized to fight the decision through protests, vigils, a blog and mailings. The Park Slope school has about 400 students.

“It has lifted me up incredibly,” said Flanagan, who asserts he only wishes to remain at the Eighth Avenue school for one more year. “Even parents I’ve had serious disagreements with have supported me.”

However, as the weeks have passed, these parents have grown increasingly frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of responsiveness from Murphy and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.

“Parents recently received a letter from Father Murphy but that was the first official notification of his decision. Before that, although word had gotten out, there hadn’t even been a formal announcement,” explained Cindy Brolsma, a mother of three.

In the June 8 letter, Murphy alluded to the tensions caused by the situation and responded to certain criticisms levied by parents.

“I haven’t done anything to create this myself,” Flanagan said of the tensions. “Parents have told me they’re demonstrating in my support, not against Father Murphy.”

Murphy did not respond to calls for comment.

Parents said they wanted to know why Murphy made this decision.

“There have not been any concrete reasons given,” said Brolsma. “Father Murphy continually refers to ‘preserving the vision’ but he won’t specify what he means.”

Flanagan, also seeking answers, said he asked Murphy how he did not fit with the pastor’s vision.

“He told me he was under no obligation to answer,” said Flanagan.

The two have not had any further communication since May 5, according to Flanagan.

The Rev. Kieran Harrington, the diocese’s vicar for communications, said, “The pastor is the sole decision maker. If there were immoral or criminal actions, certainly the diocese would get involved. But the diocese is not going to intervene because it can’t.”

This echoed the position stated in a May 30 letter to parents from Auxiliary Bishop Frank Caggiano, which explained that because Flanagan is an employee of the St. Saviour parish, the diocese, an administrative body residing over the borough’s parishes, is unable to step in.

The strain of the standoff is becoming evident. Fliers distributed at a June 17 rally urged sympathizers to “withhold monetary contributions or donations to St. Saviour Church until Mr. Flanagan is offered a new contract.”

The parents are conflicted by the recommendation but see few alternatives.

“We don’t want to hurt the parish but apparently that’s the only effective way to get a point across sometimes,” said Brolsma.

James Rowland is a father of three students at the school and Flanagan’s adviser in the impending mediation.

“I have stopped contributing during collections,” said Rowland. “I intentionally review the bulletin to see when Father Tighe is saying Mass and attend that Mass.”

The mediation is nonbinding and Murphy will ultimately be able to stick with his decision if he chooses.

“Even if we lose, it is worth it,” said Rowland. “These are our children, our school and our parish. If that’s not worth fighting for, then nothing is.”

Flanagan, meanwhile, is still optimistic that the mediation will result in an amenable decision.

“I really think my cause is a righteous one and I’m hopeful I’ll be reinstated.”