Where spirit outshines loss

Treasures from closed parishes help renew a church that had burned

Like many of her fellow parishioners, Arleen Bradley of Lawrence was devastated when her church, Sacred Heart, closed its doors three years ago, a casualty of downsizing by the Boston Archdiocese.

Bradley's family had connections to the French-Canadian church that went back more than 100 years. She and her husband were married there, as were her parents and grandparents. It was a church in which she and her children took sacraments and attended its parish school.

That old Catholic church is long gone. But pieces of it, literally, are helping out a Weymouth church with the same name that was destroyed by fire in 2005.

Sacred Heart in Weymouth recently celebrated its first Easter since reopening for services late last year. Helping make the occasion joyful were spectacular stained-glass windows, lights, and other religious objects acquired from Sacred Heart in Lawrence and St. Joseph's and St. Peter's in Lowell. The church also received items from other closed Boston-area churches.

Bradley, who attended Sacred Heart in Lawrence from 1956 until its closing in 2005, said it is bittersweet to know that the windows and lights from her old church live on in Weymouth. She's happy they survived.

But "it's difficult to see them in a different location," she said.

Many others, though, say they are delighted to see reminders of their old parish recycled for good use.

The stained-glass windows, which range from 100 to 150 years old, belong to the archdiocese, and the Weymouth church had to pay only for their refurbishment and installation, costs that were covered by insurance.

The artistic and religious touches to the new building have rekindled warm memories for parishioners in Weymouth who used to attend churches that are now closed.

"It is just like coming home," said Donald M. Smith, 74, of Weymouth, who grew up attending Blessed Sacrament in Jamaica Plain. "It is such a terrific feeling for me personally to know [some of] the windows came from Blessed Sacrament."

Smith has attended the Weymouth Landing parish for 45 years.

When fire burned through Sacred Heart, it destroyed the church's stained-glass windows, which were made in the 1800s and were valued at $2.5 million.

The restoration of the church, which has about 1,400 parishioners, cost about $9.9 million, said the Rev. Harry Kaufman, a priest at the parish. Replacing the stained glass with windows of similar quality would have cost an estimated $3 million to $5 million, said Kaufman and Mary Beth Brady, a member of the church building committee.

Instead, the church got the windows essentially for free.

But the hunt for the replacement windows was not easy, and the committee spent a lot of time looking. Making it more difficult, Kaufman said, the panel had a theme - the life of Christ. Committee members visited churches and examined windows or pictures of windows at the studio of a restoration company in Hyde Park.

They found windows from St. Joseph's and St. Peter's in Lowell, Stations of the Cross from St. Augustine's in South Boston, and windows and lights from Sacred Heart in Lawrence.

But they were still short 10 windows when they paid a visit to Jamaica Plain. "We'd gone to four or five churches and nothing had appealed to us," Kaufman said. Someone suggested that they look again at Blessed Sacrament in Jamaica Plain, "so we marched back," he said.

The windows on the bottom level of the church weren't that interesting, but then Kaufman noticed a string of beautiful windows near the ceiling.

He had to stand on the organ to get a good view, but when he finally saw them up close, he became excited. Ten of the pictures illustrated important moments in the life of Jesus. They had exactly what they wanted.

"They are beautiful - spectacular," Brady said.

Also acquired from that church was a rose window, which now hangs over the doors of Sacred Heart.

Bradley, 51, said the Stations of the Cross from Sacred Heart in Lawrence are now in a church in Andover, and seeing them there is difficult because of the painful memories they stir of her own church's demise.

Still, she is happy that the stations, windows, and lights of her Sacred Heart will live on to please and inspire other worshipers, even if they are now far from the parish she once knew.

Matt Carroll can be reached at mcarroll@globe.com. Russell Contreras can be reach at rcontreras@globe.com.