NEWTON, Mass. (AP) – Parishioners at St. Bernard Parish in Newton said they’ll begin a 24-hour prayer vigil on Sunday, becoming the fourth church to occupy their building in defiance of plans by the Boston archdiocese to shut them down.

Parishioners decided to hold the vigil after rejecting an offer from the archdiocese to continue Mass at the parish during weekends while the church’s proposed closing is reviewed and appealed.

“It was a very shallow offer,” parishioner Richard Acerra told The Boston Globe.

Acerra said the church should never have been selected to close and called the way the archdiocese decided which parishes would close “flawed from the beginning.”

“Our case was such an obvious injustice,” said Acerra, 71, who has been a member of the parish for two decades.

The Boston archdiocese is in the process of closing 82 parishes as part of a massive consolidation brought on by declining attendance and financial woes.

St. Bernard would join St. Albert the Great in Weymouth, St. Anselm in Sudbury and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in East Boston in refusing to shut down.

Last week, Archbishop Sean O’Malley postponed closing St. Bernard, originally scheduled for Monday, to allow church officials time “to provide additional assistance to the parishioners who are finding this process particularly difficult.” The archdiocese also said it would continue Masses on Saturday and Sunday.

But parishioners viewed the move as an unacceptable half-measure. At a meeting Thursday attended by about 80 people, St. Bernard parishioners voted unanimously to begin the occupation Sunday.

Some parishioners think St. Bernard was chosen because its land is valued at $11 million, the highest of any parish in the archdiocese, the Globe reported. Others think it’s because their pastor, the Rev. Paul Kilroy, was among 58 priests who publicly called for Cardinal Bernard Law to resign amid the clergy sex scandal.

Ann Carter, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said church officials are “unaware of any specific plans made by parishioners” about a vigil and referred questions about what was happening at the parish to Kilroy.

Kilroy said that he does not view the parishioners’ impending action as an “occupation or a sit-in,” but simply as a prayer vigil.

“Naturally, the people want this parish opened as fully as possible in a normal capacity, and that has not happened,” he said. “It is a great disappointment. And as a consequence of that, people feel that they need to organize to pray that this decision (to delay the closing) can be expanded to keep the church open.”