Two neighbors objected to the shrine and filed suit. Lawyers for the Missionaries of St. John the Baptist say federal religious liberty protections guarantee their right to construct the shrine.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a religious liberty case about a local zoning dispute that pitted two residents of a northern Kentucky city against a Catholic chapel that wants to build a Marian shrine.
Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, a Catholic religious association that runs the Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel in Park Hills, Kentucky — just south of Cincinnati, Ohio — faces a lawsuit that seeks to block its construction of a grotto shrine that pays homage to the Marian apparitions in 1858 in Lourdes, France.
The city board initially approved the chapel’s request to construct the shrine by granting it a variance from a zoning ordinance that would have typically prevented construction in that location, but two neighbors objected to the shrine and filed a lawsuit.
The case went up to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which ruled against the chapel, finding that the city board exceeded its authority when it gave the chapel a variance from the ordinance.
Joel and Elizabeth Frederic, the neighbors,
