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by GoPride.com News Staff

Chicago, IL — In October the City of Chicago made significant changes to the annual Gay Pride Parade, which included a new time and new route. Now comes a call to reconsider those plans. 

The new route calls for the parade to travel east down Belmont from Halsted to Broadway, taking it directly in front of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, one of the city's oldest Roman Catholic churches. 

Church leaders say the plan will interfere with it's Sunday Mass, possibly causing it to cancel morning mass for the first time in 125 years. 

On Thursday, church leaders took to Facebook urging parishioners to sign a petition to force another change of route in the annual parade. 

"Your help is needed," the church's Facebook status reads, which also urged parishioners to contact 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney to voice concern. 

As Chicago's first openly gay alderman and a member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tunney is caught in the middle. 

"As alderman, my first concern for my ward is public safety," Tunney said in a released statement read by Fox Chicago. "It became clear to the organizers and the city that the current pride parade route was unsafe to 44th Ward residents and spectators alike and there needed to be a substantive change."

The change in route and time came after last year's parade drew nearly 800,000 people, which lead to crowd control problems for the city. 

Father Thomas Srenn would like organizers to change either the route or 10 a.m. start time of the parade, which is one hour before the church's morning mass. Sreen told Windy City Times that his concerns have nothing to do with the content of the parade itself. 

Richard Pfeiffer, who has organized the annual parade for the past 40 years, told Fox Chicago that the church leadership has not called or emailed him. He offered mixed feelings on compromise.

"This church has multiple masses that go on... is that maybe a compromise," asked Pfeiffer. 

For now there seems to be no comprise in this lastest flap, but Pfieffer says that public safety is the bottom line. 

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