Final Service Held in Church After Long Protest

Parishioner Christine Kane, of Pembroke, Mass., front, cries during a planned final service at St. Frances X. Cabrini Church, Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Scituate. For more than 11 years, a core group of about 100 die-hard parishioners at the church have kept their parish open by maintaining an around-the-clock vigil in protest of a decision by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to close it following the clergy sex abuse crisis. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Parishioner Christine Kane, of Pembroke, Mass., front, cries during a planned final service at St. Frances X. Cabrini Church, Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Scituate. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

SCITUATE, Mass. (AP) — Members of a parish closed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston have held a final service before leaving the church they’ve occupied in an around-the-clock vigil since 2004.

Parishioners called Sunday’s service at St. Frances X. Cabrini in Scituate a “celebration of faith and transition.”

During the service, a handful of empty pews dotted a sea of churchgoers, many of whom openly cried. About a dozen quilts, some of them depicting each year of the vigil, decorated the church’s walls. At the service’s conclusion, families retrieved the quilts and formed a procession, carrying them down the aisles and through the church’s doors.

The archdiocese wanted to shutter the church as part of a broad restructuring plan that closed dozens of other parishes.

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