Agreement with closing parish collapses

A deal heralded as a breakthrough in the contentious battles between the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and closing parishes crumbled yesterday as members of an East Boston parish said they no longer trusted the archdiocese to stand by its promises.

A key part of last week's agreement to avert a sit-in at Our Lady of Mount Carmel called for Mass and religious education to continue at the church's convent, which would remain open after the church closed. But parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who nevertheless staged a protest this week, accused church officials of reneging.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese said that no promises had been made to have Masses said at the convent. Yesterday, in an apparent reversal, the archdiocese issued a statement saying ''it is expected that Mass will be celebrated" in the convent's chapel.

That announcement brought little comfort last night to about 80 parishioners from Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They met at the church with the pastor of Sacred Heart, who helped broker last week's agreement and whose parish was supposed to take in the closing church's congregation.

The meeting appeared to split into two factions, with most parishioners in a show of hands rejecting the offer to keep Mass going at the convent, according to participants who spoke afterward. Some parishioners, who have waged a round-the-clock vigil since the church's final Mass Sunday, said they no longer trusted the archdiocese to stand by the promise, because officials had been hedging in recent days. Others found it to be an unacceptable alternative to keeping their parish open.

''We've been lied to so many times and ticked off so much, I don't trust the archdiocese," said Ann DiFeo, 62. ''They just want us out, and they're going to try anything they can to get us out."

''We want the church," said another longtime parishioner, Gina Scalcione. ''We don't want the convent. We want the church."

At various times yesterday, six to 20 protesters occupied the red brick church, whose interior decorations -- including the stained glass windows, the pews, and the Stations of the Cross -- bear the names of families or church groups that paid for them. Two elderly women in one of the front pews prayed the Rosary in Italian, and Giovanna Rosapana, 80, a longtime parishioner, said she had spent the day trying to call the Vatican; she said she had reached a cardinal in Ravenna and told him about the woes of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The archdiocese plans to close 82 of its 357 parishes by January as part of a parish reconfiguration prompted by a shortage of priests, worshipers, and funding. The closings follow the clergy sexual abuse crisis and an $85 million settlement the archdiocese paid to alleged victims who brought claims of abuse against priests.

But the closure process has been angrily protested since the list of parishes was announced in May. One theology professor said yesterday that the archdiocese's handling of the situation mirrors its lengthy refusal to respond to complaints and allegations of sexual abuse.

''The scandal was facilitated by an attitude that says the clergy should talk and the laity should listen," said Stephen Pope, associate professor of moral theology at Boston College. ''This is another case of the archdiocese talking and the laity has to just accept it. There has to be a point in which the hierarchy has to engage in a process really of listening and not just dictating."

Last week, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley seemed to offer area Catholics an olive branch by asking eight prominent Catholics to review the closing procedures and by approving the compromise with Our Lady of Mount Carmel parishioners.

The agreement allowed Mass and religious education to take place at Our Lady of Mount Carmel convent, which otherwise would have been turned over to the archdiocese for possible sale, along with the rest of the property, the Globe reported last week. In return, nearby Sacred Heart would allow the archdiocese to sell a building it was using for religious education.

Our Lady's parishioners voted on Oct. 4 to accept the agreement, rather than stage a protest, and a spokeswoman for the archdiocese confirmed the general outline of the deal last week. The Pilot, the archdiocesan newspaper, published a similar account this week.

But some parishioners who weren't at the meeting to vote, or who changed their minds afterward, raised objections. Some said last night that they only learned after the vote that the convent chapel is tiny and would require substantial renovations. They also said the archdiocese would not commit to the deal in writing.

Then on Wednesday, Ann Carter, an archdiocesan spokeswoman, asserted that ''there was never a promise to say Mass" at the chapel. Yesterday afternoon, the archdiocese issued the statement saying ''it is expected that Mass will be celebrated," though it did not say how frequently. ''The Archbishop reiterates his commitment to honoring this promise to the [Our Lady of Mount Carmel] parishioners," the statement said.

Pope said the mixed message could only inflame the controversy. ''The more confusion and the less clarity there is, the more it's likely that people are going to have hard feeling and feel betrayed," he said.

The closures have provoked dedicated Catholics to take uncharacteristic steps to protect their communities, he said.

''Ordinarily, Catholics don't usually take this kind of action, but obviously the laity feels a little more empowered now in 2004," he said. ''And this includes even old-style, every-Friday-morning kind of Catholics that are really people who are very dedicated to the church and obedient normally. . . . I think it's a sense that the church is worth fighting for."

Our Lady of Mount Carmel's parishioners are just one group waging a highly public dispute against the closings. Parishioners at St. Albert the Great in Weymouth and St. Anselm in Sudbury have also occupied their churches in protest, and a coalition of churches this week formed to work together to fight church closings.

Yesterday, Our Lady of St. Carmel and St. Bernard Parish in West Newton joined the coalition, bringing the total number of parishes to nine, said Peter Borre, a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena in Charlestown.

''We think it's a very important effort, because parishes like this are under pressure and on the receiving end of tricks by the archdiocese," Borre said when he visited Our Lady of Mount Carmel yesterday. ''It's our goal to rally people to show solidarity with them and give practical advice and for all of us to face the archdiocese as a united bloc."

Globe correspondent Christine MacDonald contributed to this report. Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com.