It’s kind of comforting to know that even God is powerless when it comes to the whims of New York real estate. A church in Brooklyn yesterday cleared out its inventory of 211 corpses that had been buried in its crypt to help pave the way for a luxury condo complex. The 109-year-old United Methodist Church in Bay Ridge is scheduled to be demolished in May. The guy who’s fighting to save the house of worship? Councilman Vincent Gentile. Of course that would be his name.

"It's a sad day for all those ancestors of the church, whose bodies were at rest, to now have to be uprooted, disturbing their eternal peace in the name of residential development," Gentile tells the New York Post.

Protesters and members of the congregation say that those 211 corpses would be rolling over in their graves (if they were still in them).

"It's like rape" in the "name of greed," said Kathleen Walker, who heads a committee fighting to save the church from bulldozers. "I wouldn't buy a condo there; who would want to live above an ex-crypt?"

Well, that depends. How much are they going for? Hell, we’ll live in a coffin if the price is right and utilities are included. And at least you’d know for sure that all the wood is original. —Noelle Hancock

Grave Insult [NYP]