Prayerful protest calls attention to closing

CONTROVERSY IN DIOCESE: “What has happened in the last 48 hours to close this church?”

WILKES-BARRE– With yellow tape blocking access to the steps of Sacred Heart Church, a group fighting to keep the building open stood on the sidewalk Wednesday afternoon and questioned why it was safe for a large crowd attending Mass on Sunday, yet too dangerous to even approach the door two days later.

“What has happened in the last 48 hours to close this church?” Anthony Foti asked during a brief press conference. Foti and others gathered said they believed the real reason for the tape was the group’s request to hold a prayer service later in the evening in the church, or at least on its steps. Undeterred, about 30 people showed up at 7 p.m., lit candles in the dark and said the Rosary together

“There was no Ash Wednesday service scheduled here,” Foti said. “We wanted to have something.”

The group’s initial request to pray in the church was rejected by the parish pastor, Monsignor John Sempa, but the group vowed to hold it on the steps outside if he refused to open the building. On Wednesday, they found yellow “fire” tape strung across the front of the steps, prompting the afternoon press conference.

Sempa said the steps were taped off and the church shut by order of the Diocese of Scranton. “We received a letter from the architect (who had done a structural study of the building) and we were told we have to put protective scaffolding up. We even had to move a funeral that had been scheduled there.”

At the press conference, Foti said he is “a licensed professional structural engineer,” and that he did not see anything in the church fa�ade that hadn’t been there for months and even years. He noted that a study was done in 2002 that prompted some remedial work on the fa�ade, and then added that a newer study in September 2008 did not cite any dangers from the building, though it did say the steeple needs work.

Some large cracks were visible in the arch over the main door, but Foti said the problem has existed for a long time, and that the stone pieces were “pointed joints” that interlock and won’t simply fall down from such a development.

“We’ve been trying since 2002 to get capital improvement work done, but we’ve been prevented and stymied,” he said. “It’s not getting the attention it deserves, to put it politely.”

Two youngsters joining the afternoon affair offered their own opinions about the church’s imminent closing, expected for months but formally announced Jan. 31. “It’s bad,” Eric Christian said. “They have no right to do it.”

Lifetime parishioner John Dinis, a persistent critic of the closing, said he had asked for an accounting of where his church donations were spent and received a letter that said, only in general terms, that the contributions had helped pay for improvements.