{"id":3743,"date":"2006-12-30T08:59:27","date_gmt":"2006-12-30T08:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html"},"modified":"2006-12-30T08:59:27","modified_gmt":"2006-12-30T08:59:27","slug":"laugh-or-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html","title":{"rendered":"Laugh or cry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/news\/stories.nsf\/stlouiscitycounty\/story\/3BFF571434DE330E86257254000CFFC2?OpenDocument\">A little of both, I guess &#8211; Kelo v. the saints!<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>St. Louis&#8217; redevelopment agency sued a convent, a saint, a nun and an elderly<br \/>\nwoman in a wheelchair who has a 999-year lease on Friday, seeking to use<br \/>\neminent domain to condemn a property in the Ice House District north of Soulard. <\/p>\n<p>\nCity officials hope the area will be a hip entertainment district one day, but<br \/>\nfirst they have to remove stubborn landowners and tenants.  <\/p>\n<p>\nThe suit, filed in St. Louis Circuit Court, says the city&#8217;s Land Clearance for<br \/>\nRedevelopment Authority has been unable to agree on a price for 1119-1127 South<br \/>\nBroadway, owned by the Convent of the Sacred Heart.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe land and buildings have been leased for no rent to Salvatore and Mabel<br \/>\nInserra for a 999-year term, according to an appraisal supplied by the<br \/>\nInserras&#8217; lawyer, Francis X. Duda.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Inserras have leased the 13,660-square-foot property since at least the<br \/>\nearly 1980s. Salvatore Inserra, a longtime Soulard Market produce seller, died<br \/>\nat work in 1985 at age 60.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe suit also names property owners from centuries ago and their heirs,<br \/>\nincluding John Mullanphy, said to be St. Louis&#8217; first millionaire, a nun and<br \/>\n&#8220;Philipini Duchesne.&#8221; The suit appears to be referring to St. Rose Phillipine<br \/>\nDuchesne, who founded a school for the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in<br \/>\na cabin in St. Charles in 1818, according to the Vatican. She died in 1852 and<br \/>\nwas canonized in 1988.<\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little of both, I guess &#8211; Kelo v. the saints! St. Louis&#8217; redevelopment agency sued a convent, a saint, a nun and an elderly woman in a wheelchair who has a 999-year lease on Friday, seeking to use eminent domain to condemn a property in the Ice House District north of Soulard. City officials&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Laugh or cry? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Laugh or cry? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A little of both, I guess &#8211; Kelo v. the saints! St. Louis&#8217; redevelopment agency sued a convent, a saint, a nun and an elderly woman in a wheelchair who has a 999-year lease on Friday, seeking to use eminent domain to condemn a property in the Ice House District north of Soulard. City officials&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-30T08:59:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Laugh or cry? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Laugh or cry? - Via Media","og_description":"A little of both, I guess &#8211; Kelo v. the saints! St. Louis&#8217; redevelopment agency sued a convent, a saint, a nun and an elderly woman in a wheelchair who has a 999-year lease on Friday, seeking to use eminent domain to condemn a property in the Ice House District north of Soulard. City officials&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-12-30T08:59:27+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html","name":"Laugh or cry? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-30T08:59:27+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-30T08:59:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/laugh-or-cry.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Laugh or cry?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}