St. Gerard's church prepares for new life

Metro Atlanta

Mary Our Queen, a Roman Catholic parish in Norcross, has begun raising $16 million to importSt. Gerard's Church in Buffalo, N.Y., piece by piece. The 99-year-old church would get a second life in the up-and-coming parish.

The Rev. Francis "Butch" Mazur poses in front of St. Gerard's Church in Buffalo, N.Y. A Roman Catholic parish in Norcross has begun raising $16 million to import, St. Gerard's, piece by piece. The 99-year-old church would get a second life as Mary Our Queen in the up-and-coming parish.

St. Gerard's 42 stained glass windows alone are appraised at $800,000. The church was built by Italian immigrants and modeled after St. Paul Outside the Walls, a Renaissance-style basilica in Rome.

Some of the ceiling plaster, disintegrated by a leaky roof, has snowed down upon unoccupied oak pews.

A billboard showing vacation bible school participants was left behind after St. Gerard's closed, one of the casualties when the Diocese of Buffalo restructured in response to a shrinking number of Catholics.

A detail of a ceiling painting shows Jesus placing a crown on Mary. "It's like waiting for Christmas," said Patricia Di Rito, a Mary Our Queen member who thinks the churches built in the Atlanta area in the last 50 years "don't have the beauty" of many churches in the Northeast.

There are bound to be some glitches during the move. When an 8-foot statue of St. Gerard similar in size to this one of Jesus was brought south at Easter, the 1,600-pound statue fell as it was being removed from a crate and its head broke off.

"When we closed, all I could see was the church standing here deteriorating or being used for not the right kind of purpose," said parishioner Richard Ciezki, a former trustee who for years pulled the ropes to ring St. Gerard's three bells before each weekend Mass.

The Rev. Francis "Butch" Mazur frees a stuck bell hammer inside the bell tower. The idea of moving St. Gerard's out of Buffalo has angered the city council, which has begun amending city law so that a preservation board would have to review any proposal to move out property.

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The Rev. Francis "Butch" Mazur poses in front of St. Gerard's Church in Buffalo, N.Y. A Roman Catholic parish in Norcross has begun raising $16 million to import, St. Gerard's, piece by piece. The 99-year-old church would get a second life as Mary Our Queen in the up-and-coming parish.

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