Standing on the balcony of Immanuel Lutheran Church on a bone-chilling Saturday afternoon in Braddock, William Zachary said a prayer that seemed to lift the spirits of a mass of protesters who gathered to decry the loss of a community hospital.

"Victory is given to those who endure to the end," said Mr. Zachary, 76, a longtime Braddock resident and deacon at Resurrection Baptist Church.

A member of Braddock Borough Council since 1982, Mr. Zachary called on the 200 or so protesters to hold hands and have faith that their community will persevere through what they all agreed was its darkest hour yet -- the loss of the UPMC Braddock hospital.

Opened in 1906 as Braddock General Hospital and then operated by the Sisters of Divine Providence since 1935, the former Braddock Medical Center became UPMC Braddock in 1996 when the giant hospital system acquired it.

The hospital closes today, three months after UPMC announced that it could not continue to operate the facility at a loss of between $4 million and $12 million annually.

UPMC blames the loss, in part, to a drop in patient admissions and general underuse by the Mon Valley communities it served.

Since then, borough residents and community activists have been engaged in a protracted public relations and legal battle to compel UPMC to keep the hospital open, culminating with Saturday's protest in front of the hospital building at Fifth Street and Braddock Avenue.

"I feel inspired by the energy of this crowd, and it compels me to have faith that something good will come out of this sad day," said Mr. Zachary, adding that a similar sense of faith-driven destiny filled him when he arrived in Braddock in 1952.

"I have seen this town go through some of the worst experiences and yet we survived. We will survive this, too," he said.

That, for the most part, was the sentiment of the rally, in equal parts a community revival and a call to arms.

"We lost the battle, but the war is not over. We are still alive!" shouted Tony Buba, a local filmmaker and one of the leaders of the grassroots campaign Save Our Community Hospitals.

He and others yelled into a bull horn to rev up the people in the invigorated crowd, urging them not to falter in their effort to keep a vibrant medical facility in the community.

"Let us be resolute that our angst, our anger, our anxiety today is only exceeded by our determination to expose this corporate monster known as UPMC," said Ed Cloonan, a Munhall resident and another organizing member of the campaign.

Allegheny County Councilman Charles P. McCullough also promised to carry forward the fight.

On Monday, Mr. McCullough, R-Upper St. Clair, filed for an emergency, or temporary, injunction to stop UPMC from closing the hospital on grounds that the closure would violate its 2007 debt financing agreements with the county's hospital development authority and the Bank of New York Mellon.

Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge Gene Strassburger dismissed the case. Mr. McCullough has filed an appeal with state Commonwealth Court.

"[UPMC] doesn't want to see you in court because they can't justify what they have done here," Mr. McCullough told the crowd.

"But don't you worry about the closing of this hospital's doors tomorrow," he said. "Because when we win, they will have to re-open them."

Meanwhile, Braddock Borough Council President Jesse Brown, who has filed a civil rights complaint against UPMC with the U.S. Department of Justice, told the crowd that he and borough Councilwoman Tina Doose met with the hospital system's CEO Jeffrey Romoff on Thursday to discuss the closure.

UPMC, Mr. Brown told the crowd, is considering a payment in lieu of taxes that would contribute about $10 million to Braddock.

"We went in and talked to them, but I didn't hear anything that suggests they are really listening to us," Mr. Brown said. "I think they are trying to use me and [Ms. Doose] against the community."

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