We vigil on

Anyám, jőjj segíts imádkozni !

Mother, Come help us pray!

looking about after service

one of the crows on top of one of St. Casimir's steeples

It is not the camera or the photographer that makes the photograph interesting, it is the subject captured in the instant of the shutter snap. Yesterday, the Catholic exiles continued their sidewalk prayer and witness at five parishes.

At St. Emeric's a hand wrote a plea on a portal sandstone block. Virtually, all the parishioners at Imre's park in the adjacent West Side Market lot. West 22nd is a cul-de-sac, with the parish, and a tenement apartment building. You drive on the cul-de-sac, you meant to go there. There is not passing traffic. There seems to be always one vehicle that sweeps buy during the service. The first week, it was a 2nd district police cruiser. Yesterday, it was a red pick up truck. He drove the circle, and slowly came to a stop at the right angle corner dead end of W. 22 and Bridge. He got out of the truck with a large video camera, stood with his back to the cul-de-sac, looked at the scrub tree growth, and went back in the truck and drove away.

As St. Casimir's was preparing for their vigil, a sheriff's car drives up, Joe Feckanin (the english language prayer cheerleader) chats with the two deputies. Both were Catholic, one belonged to the suppressed St. Wenceslaus. Near the end of the service on Sowinski and E. 82 a Cleveland police cruiser stops at the intersection, and gives the crowd the 'thumb up' gesture and a smile of approval. A couple of black churches have services nearby, and some of their folk wave a greeting as they travel on E. 82. It is not a very busy street Sunday mid-day. People do see a couple of dozen other people pray and sing, and the poles always have some banners and other items to catch the eye. What do they think?

As the lennonists say, "it is not the bricks and mortar, that make the parish, it's the people". The parish continues outside the "bricks and mortar", yet they have affection for the "bricks and mortar".