BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) – Members of seven parishes ordered closed by the Boston Archdiocese vowed Sunday to continue holding round-the-clock protest vigils despite Archbishop Sean O’Malley’s decision to reopen two of the churches.

Parishioners said O’Malley and other senior church officials employed a flawed and arbitrary process for deciding which churches will reopen and which will remain closed.

“Your bureaucrats have served you badly,” Council of Parishes co-chairman Peter Borre said of O’Malley’s top deputies, including Bishop Richard Lennon.

The council, a lay group, celebrated a “Mass of solidarity” Sunday at the Infant Jesus-St. Lawrence Parish in Brookline, one of the seven parishes where members are holding 24-hour vigils.

After the Mass, which wasn’t sanctioned by the archdiocese, council members gathered in front of reporters to respond to O’Malley’s decision to reverse the closing of St. Albert the Great in Weymouth.

O’Malley also announced last month that St. Anselm church in Sudbury will reopen as a chapel and celebrate a regular Sunday Mass.

Cynthia Deysher, a council co-chair, said she and other St. Anselm parishioners are grateful, but they won’t end their vigil until they know the details of O’Malley’s plan to reopen the church as a chapel affiliated with a Framingham parish.

“Some of it requires faith, but that’s what Catholics are used to,” she said.

About a year ago, O’Malley announced plans to close almost a quarter of the archdiocese’s 357 parishes. He attributes the need for church closings to a shortage of priests, changing demographics and a financial crisis brought on in part by the cost of clergy sex abuse lawsuits.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Kelly Lynch said Sunday that O’Malley knew his decisions “would not please all people affected by them.”

“It remains the hope of the Archdiocese that these vigils conclude peacefully,” Lynch added in a prepared statement.

O’Malley based his decision to reopen St. Albert and St. Anselm on a recommendation by a church reconfiguration committee he formed. Council members urged O’Malley to expand that committee’s role in guiding the church closing process.

“Expand this committee to bring in Boston’s real Catholics, people who have kept their faith while losing their trust during the terrible years of (Cardinal Bernard Law),” Borre said.

Warren Hutchison, a parishioner at Infant Jesus-St. Lawrence, said his parish is “fighting a battle of numbers” because it isn’t as large as St. Albert. But the Brookline parish is financially sound and isn’t costing the archdiocese any money, he argued.

“We simply want an opportunity to bring parishioners back in the pews,” he said.

St. Albert’s parishioners plan to end their vigil once their church officially reopens. Mary Akoury, who co-chairs St. Albert’s parish council, said O’Malley’s decision to reopen her church doesn’t change her view that the process is flawed.

“Vibrant, thriving parishes were closed,” she said. “Our heart goes out to those that continue to be in vigil. We know the pain that they are feeling.”

Borre said council members waited until Sunday to hold their press conference out of respect for Pope John Paul II, whose funeral was Friday.

AP-ES-04-10-05 1736EDT