[Magdalen] A little parish in the shadow of the Empire Sta

[Jim Guthrie]

>I have a pic of such a thing, from an AP article years ago.  It's a tiny thing, 
>surrounded by bustling New York, with, as mentioned, the Empire State Building 
>just >a couple blocks away.  Which parish is it?

The smallest appearing church within a two block radius of the Empire State 
Building is the RC Friars of St Francis between Sixth and Seventh Avenues near 
Penn Station.

It looks tiny on the outside, but it runs trough the block with a taller section 
in the center that one can’t see from the streets.

Fr. Mychal Judge, chaplain to the NYC Fire Department (as well as Dignity) was a 
member of the order and lived there.

I don’t know if they still do, but at the height of the AIDS crisis, they held 
funeral Masses for gay men regularly -- sometimes twice a day -- despite the 
disapproval of Cardinal O'Connor.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie