Calais parish readying to rebuild

CALAIS – Their first priority after a July fire destroyed the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church was to dig a statue of the Virgin Mary out of the rubble that surrounded it.

“She was hoisted out by a crane and she is being stored … in a safe place,” the Rev. Frank Morin, the parish priest, said Friday.

Now that the Virgin Mary has been safely stored away, parishioners are ready to tackle the future, including rebuilding.

In July, a bolt of lightning struck the church, and although the roof collapsed overhead, the statue of the Virgin Mary escaped damage. The rest of the church was not that lucky. It is a burned-out shell.

Morin said Friday that the Parish Council had met this week and plans to form a finance committee. “The finance committee would be formed with input from key people in the parish and from that committee we would set up the building committee,” he said.

Morin lost most of his personal belongings in the late-night fire. He said smoke and water damaged his collection of books, while photographs he had collected over the years burned. He also lost his clothes. “I did find most of my personal records. There’s still one little box, one of those fire alert boxes; it has to be under the debris somewhere,” he said.

Morin said parishioners are talking about rebuilding. “The diocese will assist us with where we want to go,” he said. “We are in the process now of concluding the set-up of the financial settlement with the insurance company.”

Although rebuilding is on everyone’s lips, where to build is the subject of rumors. Among the chitchat on the street is a plan to combine the Calais and Baileyville Catholic churches into one and build somewhere between the two communities. Morin chuckled and said he’d heard the same rumor. “I told people Sunday at Mass, … ‘Listen to all the rumors,’ I said. ‘Spread them,’ I said, ‘Enjoy them.’ The shuffle will work itself out. I said, ‘Don’t feel guilty about sharing rumors,'” he said.

The priest said there would be a salvage operation before the building is demolished. “I and some other key people will go in with [whoever] gets the contract, and it will be local, and we will point out things that need to be taken out first before the demolishing of everything,” he said. “It looks like the whole site will be demolished. There will be no saving of walls. That seems to be the most probable conclusion, but we haven’t got anything official yet. But I am getting messages from the dioceses that that looks like the way we all are going to go. It’s an insurance company decision.”

A severe thunderstorm with bolts of lightning that lit up Calais Avenue and shook the ground is being blamed for the fire that destroyed the church.

The same bolt of lightning also damaged the St. Croix Masonic Hall less than a block away.

The church, located at Calais Avenue and Washington Street, was 18 years old and had about 500 members. It was built in 1987 across the street from the old church, completed in 1893.

Neighbors notified the Calais Fire Department shortly after it was discovered. It was too late. The fire was fast, hot and devastating, claiming the church, the nearby rectory and most of their contents – except for a statue of the Virgin Mary.

In the church entryway, its hands clasped in prayer, the statue stood in a ray of sunshine the morning after the July 23 fire. The roof had collapsed around it, setting up a protective barrier from the unforgiving fire.

Church records dating back to the 1800s, before the parish was organized in 1864, were saved. The records include dates of births, deaths, baptisms, marriages and the service of priests. The records are used by church archivists to tell the history of the parish and the community, and by genealogists.

Immaculate Conception, its parish hall and rectory were insured for $1.6 million, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.