Unwilling to give up their vigil

Today, all six churches plan to send letters to O’Malley, kicking off an appeals process expected to last two to three years. Until a decision is handed down by the Vatican, canon law dictates that the archdiocese cannot sell the church buildings, said Peter Borré, cochairman of the Council of Parishes, an organization that supports parishes slated to close.

“We’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere,’’ Maryellen Rogers said during the St. Frances service yesterday, to applause from the pews. “This is our church.’’ Today marks the 2,456th day of their vigil.

The churches slated to lose their status are St. Frances in Scituate; St. James the Great in Wellesley; St. Jeanne D’Arc in Lowell; Star of the Sea in Quincy; Our Lady of Lourdes in Revere; and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Boston.

Previous appeals to the Vatican to reopen the churches were rejected in early 2010. O’Malley has asked the parishioners who continue their vigils to give up and move on.

“We’re not looking for a confrontation, but at some point, the vigils are going to have to end,” said archdiocese spokesman Terrence C. Donilon. “If the Vatican had come back and said, ‘Reopen those parishes,’ we would have, but they didn’t. They reaffirmed the cardinal’s decision.”

After services yesterday, parishioners said they were willing to face arrest to fight the sale of buildings that carry deep emotional ties: where their parents got married, where children were baptized and, in the case of St. Frances, where parishioners built the church in the late 1950s.

Many parishioners cite the same statistic: half of 25 shuttered churches in similar situations won their appeals with the Vatican and reopened. That includes parishes in Springfield and Allentown, Pa., where churches were kept open as houses of worship, a designation given to buildings still considered holy, but not a full parish staffed by a priest.

“If you were a betting person, you might say, ‘Hmm, maybe this is a shot worth taking,’ ’’ Borré said. “So that’s exactly what we’re doing.’’