The Boston Globe has a front-page story on the Vatican’s high court siding with Cardinal Sean O’Malley in his decision to shutter a parish in Lowell, Mass.

Though the ruling is legally limited to St. Jeanne d’Arc in Lowell, it has unwelcome implications for the scores of other parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston fighting to keep their church doors open, says the Globe. Five of those parishes have held vigils in protest of the planned closings for as long as 40 months.

“This is ominous for any parish,” Bill Bannon, a critic of the archdiocese, told the Globe.

Apparently, the archdiocese’s advocate told the Vatican tribunal that O’Malley had been given discretion to save his see from financial ruin provoked by the sexual abuse crisis. That contradicts O’Malley himself, who told advocates for the closed parishes that the churches were not being closed to pay abuse settlements, according to the Globe.

The ruling was in Latin, the Globe had to hire a translator, and it has not been widely dispersed. Read more here.