Nearly all of the ongoing legal issues involving St. Mary of the Angels Church, except for an appeal filed a year ago without any action, have been resolved.The article carries numerous inaccuracies, leading me to question whether Ms Cohen, listed as a co-author and who probably wrote this section of the article, has been getting "facts" from Mrs Bush without checking them. There was never a vote by the vestry "asking Kelley to resign as their priest in 2011." Nor was Fr Kelley ever "fired" by the ACA; the ACA had no authority over him or the parish after January 2011, which has been fully established in the court cases. The "holding tank" is not a "gray area"; the courts have held that the parish vote to enter the Patrimony of the Primate was valid -- nothing gray about it.Most recently, a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge ruled on behalf of Father Christopher Kelley December 12, 2016 in a summary judgment that the petitioners fighting to remove him, including Los Feliz resident Marilyn Bush, “had no standing to initiate the litigation” according to Kelley.
Bush and others filed suit in 2012 to remove Kelley and assume control of the church. Ultimately, the lawsuit morphed into four separate cases, including a civil suit filed by Bush and others against Kelley and his family, which Kelley said was also dismissed last December 12th.
“We have cleared the rubbish from the back past,” said Kelley in an interview.
At one point during the 3-½ year legal proceedings, Bush and others won control in court and took over the church, while Kelley and his supporters refused to leave.
Locks were changed, security guards hired, and at one point the parish’s warring factions even operated from different floors inside the church building.
Finally, a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge ruled December 15, 2015 in Kelley’s favor and he and his supporters retook possession of the church in February of 2016.
Bush and others did file an appeal shortly after that December 2015 ruling, which is the one legal challenge that remains.
Kelley was the rector at St. Mary’s from 2007 until his firing in 2012 by the Anglican Church of America.
The complex saga began in 2011 after the parish voted twice to exit the Anglican Church and become Roman Catholic after then Pope Benedict XVI opened the door in 2009 for Protestant parishes to do so.
Overlapping that issue, was a vote, taken by the church’s governing body—called a vestry—asking Kelley to resign as their priest in 2011.
Kelley refused, indicating, in part, he and the church were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church, citing the parish vote to move to Roman Catholicism. At that time, there was a so-called “holding tank”—a gray area, for lack of a better term—for parishes awaiting confirmation into the Roman Catholic faith.
Bush claimed in legal filings that the vestry had reason to fire Kelley, mostly over church financial wrongdoing. However, court documents showed those claims were unfounded.
Regarding the lease of the church’s property—what locals still refer to as the old Citibank building—negotiations to find a new lessee, Kelley said, are still ongoing.
Citibank moved from the space in October 2015 for smaller quarters on Hillhurst Avenue.
According to Kelley, Box Brothers used the building’s downstairs space throughout the 2016 holiday season, but still, he said, there is no announcement for a new tenant.
“It’s taken a while,” Kelley said. “It’s been vacant for over a year.
On the other hand, she does note that the courts have consistently found that there was never financial wrongdoing at the parish, and the opinion that the legal issues are working toward resolution in the parish's favor is probably also correct.
Ms Cohen once threatened to sue me for calling her a fourth-rate journalist, but I still think this story is a little too much for her. As the vestryman put it,
This does put her in the same accuracy boat with the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC & CBS News!!!! We, as the general public, cannot trust any of them to get the story right!
