*Pope Francis is meeting with Catholic school children at Our Lady Queen of Angels elementary school in East Harlem, a school that could have faced closure when its neighboring parish was shuttered.
The school is in a largely Latino and black neighborhood i on 112th Street in Manhattan and includes nearly 300 students ranging from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
The school was once part of the church of Our Lady Queen of Angels, which was closed in 2007 as part of a large number of church closures by the Archdiocese of New York. Many parishioners resisted the church’s shutdown, and some still meet to pray in the park across the street from the church. Churches usually help subsidize their parish schools, so the elementary school might have closed, too.
The school, which has been around since 1892, had been turned over to the Partnership for Inner-City Education, a nonprofit group dedicated to Catholic education, which shares resources between several schools instead of forcing them to rely on one church for support.
Pope Francis is also meeting with immigrants inside the gymnasium of the school.
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