A Brookhaven resident is among an undetermined number ofparishioners and volunteers who have barricaded themselves insidethe rectory of St. Augustine Church in Treme, La., to protest theclosure of the historic parish by the Archdiocese of NewOrleans.

“As long as we have a takeover of the rectory, we figure we havea takeover of the church,” said church member John Powell.

Powell now resides in Brookhaven, but maintains a home in theNew Orleans area.

Powell, in a cellular telephone interview this morning, wouldnot say how many people have locked themselves inside the rectory.He said, though, protesters include church members, students andhurricane relief workers.

“We’re using the students because they have the time andenergy,” he said. “Many of the church members are elderly and havespecial needs and cannot sit here.”

The parishioners locked themselves in Monday to protest adecision to merge the St. Augustine parish with St. Peter Claverparish.

“We want to keep the pastor we had. He was replaced in a coupwithin the archdiocese,” Powell said.

The parish was closed last week. It is among the parishes theNew Orleans Archdiocese plans to consolidate as it deals withfinancial shortfalls and smaller congregations since HurricaneKatrina struck the city on Aug. 29.

Church officials have stressed that the building itself willstill be used for Sunday Mass, according to FOX news coverage.

The Rev. William Maestri, spokesman for the archdiocese, toldFOX news that St. Peter Claver has about 3,000 registered families,compared to 250 registered members at St. Augustine. It alsoprovides services that St. Augustine doesn’t, including religiouseducation for children and adults.

Powell said that’s not enough.

“This is our heritage,” he said. “This is our roots, where freeblacks and slaves worshipped together with owners.”

St. Augustine Church was founded by slaves and free men of colorin 1841 with the blessing of the archdiocese and produced thesecond order of black nuns in the United States in 1842. It waslargely a parish of Italian immigrants in the early 1900s, butreverted to a predominantly black church in the 1960s as whiteresidents left the Treme neighborhood, according to FOX news.

Powell said the historical value of the church alone is wellworth the money needed to keep it open.

In recent weeks, increasing numbers of college students andyoung people doing volunteer relief work in New Orleans have beendrawn to St. Augustine by its heritage of music and faith,according to the The Times-Picayune newspaper.

Communications between parishioners and the archdiocese havedeteriorated steadily since the closure was first announced lastmonth, according to the newspaper. Four letters to Maestri wereallegedly never answered.

Church pastor the Rev. Jerome LeDoux and several parishionersdid appear before an internal church panel to plead the case forSt. Augustine, but those efforts were apparently not successful,according to the coast newspaper.