Parishioners of the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church must end their 11-year protest vigil and vacate the now-closed Roman Catholic church, a Massachusetts judge ruled Thursday.
Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Edward Leibensperger said in a 16-page ruling that the parishioners are "unlawfully and intentionally" trespassing at the church in Scituate. He said they will be barred from entering the church effective May 29.
Spokespeople for the Archdiocese of Boston and the protest group did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The protesters have said they intend to appeal if Leibensperger, who held a one-day trial earlier this month in the case, ruled against them.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church was among dozens closed in a 2004 restructuring to address the Boston Archdiocese's debt. But group of parishioners has been holding a nonstop vigil inside the church ever since. At least one parishioner has occupied the church all day and night.
After the parishioners sought and failed to appeal to the Vatican for relief, the archdiocese gave the group a March 9 deadline to leave. When parishioners refused, the archdiocese took them to court, arguing that they were trespassing on private property.
Parishioners turned to church law to argue that they had a right to worship in the space and that the civil court had no jurisdiction in the matter.
Leibensperger, in his ruling, disputed that notion.
"The right to control access to one's property invokes no ecclesiastic issue," he wrote. "An owner of a property has clear and unequivocal interest, supported by property law, to prevent uninvited and unsupervised persons from being inside the building."
Read the order:
