For nearly 600 consecutive evenings, a group of worshipers has prayed the rosary outside the locked doors of Our Lady of Peace, a Roman Catholic Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, trying to keep their church alive.

Since their church was shut down in a round of parish mergers in 2015, the group has been fighting to reopen it through prayer vigils and a continued legal appeal before the Vatican. But the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, has been pursuing a different plan, taking the matter of this East 62nd Street chapel to the pope himself.

On Sunday, the jewel-box-like sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace was opened for a Divine Liturgy service, a weekly sacrament of communion, but not a Roman Catholic one. At Cardinal Dolan’s direction, the archdiocese has granted a one-year lease to the local parish of the Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient Christian denomination based in Egypt. The lease is the first stage of a plan to transform the church into the Coptic Church’s New York cathedral, an idea that both Cardinal Dolan and Coptic leaders say Pope Francis has blessed.

Last April in Rome, Cardinal Dolan introduced Pope Francis to Bishop David, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of New York and New England. They raised the idea of selling the Manhattan church to the Coptic faith, which has a history of persecution in the Middle East, the archdiocese said.