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Chicago Nuns Sue Nearby Strip Club

Emma Colton Deputy Editor
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Sick and tired of finding empty whiskey bottles and used condoms on the street after morning mass, a Chicago-area convent is suing a strip club, claiming zoning laws forbid adult entertainment businesses to be less than 1,000 feet from places of worship.

According to an Associated Press report, The Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo deal with public violence, pulsating music and strobe lights streaming from Club Allure in the suburban village of Stone Park on a daily basis. Thus the sisters have lawyered-up and slapped the strip club with a lawsuit.

“Our sisters’ sacred space has been invaded,” Sister Noemia Silva told the Chicago Sun-Times. “At night now they hear the music when they’re praying. That’s uncalled for.”

But even though the nuns have repeatedly found used contraceptives outside their convent and have been disturbed by drunken fights between patrons of the strip club, the manager of the joint, Robert Itzkow, said that too much money has been put into the place just to have nuns put it out of business. (RELATED: Strip Club Next To Convent Comes Under Fire)

“We spent an awful lot of money to make sure that this kind of thing [the lawsuit] would not occur,” Itzkow told WMAQ-TV. “The whole thing is just a question of ‘we don’t like you; you don’t conform to our religious beliefs.'”

The manager added that more importantly, the nuns shouldn’t be so upset because the strippers are “daughters; they’re mothers, and some of them are Catholics too.”

According to the AP report, the nuns have joined with other Stone Park residents to force the club to move away from the convent.