Sharon Wilbur clings to the rosary she carried as a child as she looks
through old family photographs of weddings, baptisms and first
communions.
The three generations of memories all took place in the
same church, St. Gerard's Catholic Church, in Buffalo, N.Y.
But like so many children of the rustbelt, Wilbur left those memories
behind many years ago when the south promised better opportunities.
For Wilbur, Sunday mass is now in suburban Atlanta, at Mary Our Queen,
in a nondescript building that looks more like an office park than a
Catholic basilica.
She never dreamed she'd see her family's church again until her pastor
announced one Sunday what seemed like a crazy idea: He wanted to have
traditional place of worship by moving an existing church, piece by
piece, to the open lot next door.
The real surprise came when he revealed where he'd found the perfect transplant.
"I said, 'Ah, that was my parish. That's where I was born,'" Wilbur says. "I thought it was just amazing."
When Father David Dye went in search of more space for his growing
congregation, he says he didn't want a church from typical suburbia.
"I don't mean to offend the people who built those churches, but some of them look like Pizza Huts," he says.
Dye first asked for blueprints to build a church that would look and
feel old.
But then the diocese of Buffalo came up with a unique idea
for solving their problem of closed and empty parishes.
They offered to
sell him an entire church if he could move it 900 miles south to
Norcross, Ga.
Dye soon discovered the idea could be pulled off for less than half the
cost of building a new church from scratch. If his parish can raise $16
million, they'll be able to move St. Gerard's, piece by piece on
flatbed trucks.
Disassembling the church will take six months and the reconstruction
another year, but architects have already created 3-D models of the
church so that it can be put back together like a puzzle.
"If you were to go to Home Depot and buy pieces and build a church, well
you've got to get the pieces from somewhere," Dye says.
"This is just
coming here to get the pieces and the parts of the church."
What's happening at St. Gerard's is an unusual remedy to a problem
facing the Catholic Church across the Northeast and Midwest.
What do
you do with old closed buildings, when shrinking congregations force the
doors to close?
Of the hundreds of buildings that have been closed, some have found new
life as malls, restaurants or even bars.
But hundreds of closed
churches sit empty, as Catholics from the rust belt have left for the
Bible belt.
Now for the first time, an entire church may go with them.
But not if Buffalo's City Council President David Franczyk has his way.
"It's totally insane, because you're trying to harvest our treasures out of Buffalo," Franczyk says.
Franczyk is fighting the move, pushing to make it illegal to take old buildings from his city, just like in Egypt or Rome.
"You know you can be arrested and put in jail in some countries for
doing this sort of thing," Franczyk says. "Just because Buffalo is
temporarily down on its luck, you don't like organ transplants, take our
life out of our city."
But for now there's no life at St. Gerard's, and no better ideas for
what to do with it.
The roof of the old church is leaking, the pews are
covered in mold, and the dozens of stained-glassed windows are
beginning to buckle.
Even the former pastor of St. Gerard's, Rev. Francis Mazur, would like to see his old church go.
"Why should a church become a restaurant, or a nightclub? Let's reuse it
for its intention. It's a holy place. A sacred place," Mazur says.
Dye agrees, but says he also understands the concerns his plan raises.
"Am I happy that this parish closed? Certainly not. This church was
built by working families. Immigrant families. So they really
sacrificed to build this place," Dye says. "But it will continue to be
used as a church, which I think is very important for the people who
built it to be used as a church."
At least one descendant of those families agrees.
Sharon Wilbur still remembers gazing up at the massive dome and ornate
ceiling inside St. Gerard's.
Now she waits to be reunited with her
childhood and family memories, piece by piece.
SIC: ABC/USA