Restoring a beautiful gift

While the closure of the Monastery of the Precious Blood is still keenly felt by many in the Diocese of Portland, two beautiful pieces from the monastery’s chapel will now grace another faith community. The white marble altar and reredos were gifted to the Parish of the Holy Eucharist for use at Sacred Heart Church in Yarmouth.

“We are very, very thankful to the Sisters of the Precious Blood,” says Father Daniel Greenleaf, pastor. “While it would have been wonderful if they still had a full community using it, since that is not the case, we’re honored to use it now and will pray for them and pray for vocations.”

Father Greenleaf says his connections with the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood go back to his seminary days, so he was well familiar with the altar that was used in their Portland chapel for decades.  That is why, when the two remaining sisters moved to the Precious Blood Monastery in Manchester, N.H., last year, he knew Sacred Heart would be the ideal place for the altar to go.

“The architecture of the church fits the altar. There is marble around the altar rail, and the back reredos has a Romanesque arch to it, which is really all throughout Sacred Heart, so I thought this would be the perfect place for this altar,” he says. “It’s going to be amazing.”

The church had been using a more plain, wooden altar, which came from the now closed St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Orono. The altar from the monastery features a depiction of the Last Supper with columns of gold leaf framing it.

“The crown jewel is the front, the Last Supper,” says Father Greenleaf. “I find that people need sacramentals.  Some of our young people aren’t often making the connection anymore between the Eucharist and the Last Supper. So, having the Last Supper right on the front of the altar will be a wonderful, constant reminder that the Eucharist was established at the Last Supper and that the Eucharist is Christ’s great gift to us.”

Moving, restoring, and reinstalling the altar and reredos was the job of DICON, the diocesan construction company. It was a task that presented a few challenges.

The altar is actually made up of 16 pieces, while the reredos, which will hold the tabernacle, has 45.  The altar’s main pieces include the back panel and top, which are both over seven feet long, along with the depiction of the Last Supper, which weighs approximately 400 pounds.

The altar and reredos were originally attached, but they were split apart in the 1990s.  Unfortunately, according to DICON, materials used in the process now made it difficult to separate the individual pieces.

“It was hard getting it apart without breaking everything. We had to restore the pieces because of it.  They had so much epoxy and caulking on the face, and there are no products to remove that from marble, so we had to make up our own,” says John Bowen, the chief mason.

Bowen says working with marble is a delicate process.

“It chips really easily, so you have to be extremely careful just handling it, moving it around.  If you break a piece, you can’t go down to the local building supplier and buy it,” he says.

To protect the pieces as much as possible, a moving crate was built for each one. The pieces were also all measured and numbered to make sure they could be precisely put back together.

“I took pictures of everything and put numbers on them,” says Bowen. “I actually hand drew it all with all the individual pieces and the measurements, how wide everything was, setbacks, overhangs.”

Bowen says some smaller pieces were too badly damaged to be saved, but fortunately, the altar had sat on a marble slab, so DICON was able to salvage some of that marble and use it to create replacements.

“Fortunately, the pieces I had to make, I could actually cut them on a tile saw because they were smaller, thinner, pieces,” says Bowen. “Then, we had to go through an 11-step process to regrind them and refinish them.  It’s just different grits and diamond pads that grind it to bring back the gloss finish in them.”

Bowen says the altar had a lot of scratches and stains resulting from its many years of service.  Each piece was carefully cleaned and restored. That included using a toothbrush and gentle cleaner to carefully maneuver around each apostle in the Last Supper, a task that fell to Paul Foley, a carpenter helping out on the project.

“What’s cool about this particular project is that this altar was going to be left behind, and now, we found a parish that could use it and use it in all its glory,” he says.

Before the altar could be placed in the sanctuary at Sacred Heart, work needed to be done to shore up the floor.  According to John Orcutt, a mason, there was a concrete layer about 16 inches beneath the sanctuary’s wooden floor, but a space was left in between. DICON used concrete blocks to fill in the gap providing a solid foundation.  Additional blocks were then used to create an interior, unseen base for the altar.

“What I’m doing here is just kind of building the inside, so we have something to attach the altar to,” he explains. “It helps having something in there to keep it together and keep it from falling over because it is just a couple inches thick.”

The project took about four months to complete but was worth the wait.

“It’s pretty striking when you get to the back of the church and look forward,” says Father Greenleaf. “It looks like it always belonged there, which is wonderful.”

The altar is just one of several projects being worked on by DICON across the diocese.  Those on the crew say the variety and precision of the work are among the things they enjoy most about their jobs.

“I never know what I’m doing from one day to the next. I do carpentry, masonry, painting, a little bit of everything,” says Orcutt. “I like working with the marble. It’s not something you get to do very often.”

“What I enjoy most about my work is the fact that I’m a Catholic carpenter working on Catholic churches. Can’t get any better than that?” says Foley. “The old saying for carpenters is ‘You’re not building a church.’ The meaning of this statement is hurry up and finish! Forget quality, we have a deadline, but in actuality, yes, I am building a church! Very cool!”