Building on faith Calais Catholics rebuild on site of burned church

CALAIS – Two years ago Leah McLean stood on the side of the road, tall hot flames reflecting in her eyeglasses as she watched her church burn to the ground.

“It was like losing my home,” she said recently.

But no more.

McLean, who is the chairwoman of the Immaculate Conception parish counsel, sees the progress each day as the $3.5 million church is being rebuilt, one beam at a time. Parishioners hope to be in by Easter 2008, or perhaps later that April.

Shortly after the fire, the nearby First Congregational Church of Christ opened its doors to their displaced neighbors. The Catholics have been holding Mass there ever since.

McLean will never forget the fire.

It was July 22, 2005, very early on a Saturday morning.

Huge thunderstorms had pounded the area. Then a bolt of lightning lit up Calais Avenue and shook the ground. The lightning struck the church’s cross and a fire started. Another bolt of lightning damaged the St. Croix Masonic Hall less than a block away.

Around 1:30 a.m., orange flames swallowed up the large golden cross atop the church’s cupola. Flames raced across the roof. Parishioners were dragged from their beds. They all described a “huge furnace of flames coming out of the roof of the church.”

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. Afterward, people called the statue’s survival a miracle.

“She had two prongs on her crown in the back that were damaged,” McLean said. “She had some soot on her; she has to be cleaned. We couldn’t have had her in a better place. She was right under a supporting post and when that roof came down it came down like a tent over her.”

The statue has been in storage since the fire. Once the church is built, the Virgin Mary will have her place of honor in the narthex. A stained-glass window from the original church built in 1893 was found and will be positioned behind the Virgin Mary.

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

Today, McLean and other church members aren’t looking at the past, but to the future.

“I am anxious to get into the church,” said Lenny Lloyd, a member of the building committee who recently toured the construction site.

The new church is being built on the same footprint as the burned church, but there are changes. The new parish hall and kitchen are in the position where the church used to be, and the church is across the entryway. The rectory occupies the same place it did in the church that burned.

All of the church’s stained-glass windows were destroyed in the fire, so the building committee looked around and found some at a former convent in Lewiston. “All we had to pay for was to have them removed, crated and stored,” Lloyd said.

Church organist Marie McGarrigle, 77, is eager to get into the new church. She is tired of playing the piano at the Congregational Church.

“I told them that old pipe organ they have in there [the Congregational Church], I think it come over on the Ark. I told them that,” she said with a laugh.

She can’t wait for the new Catholic Church organ to be delivered. “I got my organ all picked out and bought,” she said.

Anne Perry, who is a state representative and a member of the church, talked about the sense of community that evolved after the fire.

“As traumatic an experience as it was, it was a very growing experience for the Catholic community,” she said. “It has been a good experience all the way around.”

All of the parishioners are grateful to the Congregational Church for opening its doors.

Arlene Barnard, 88, who has been a member since 1942, like McLean, can’t wait to get into the new church.

“It’ll be like going home,” McLean said.