Building a beacon of faith
Drive down College Avenue in Orono and you will see signs of promising things to come.
“This is the bell tower, and that is going to be the front door,” says Alan Hinkley, construction superintendent of the Diocesan Construction Company (DICON). “They never had a bell tower before.”
“Seeing it soaring is very exciting,” says Father Kyle Doustou, pastor of the Parish of the Resurrection of the Lord in Old Town.
The bell tower is one of the signature pieces of a chapel that will be part of a new Newman Center that is being constructed to serve members of the University of Maine community as well as area residents. There has been a Newman Center on the Orono campus since 1946, and although a new center was dedicated in 1971, the building, with its numerous windows and flat roof, proved to be incompatible with Maine winters.
“The building was really deteriorating faster than it should have, partly because Maine winters are tough, and the building had a lot of windows, plus the weight of the roof from the snow loads,” explains Father Doustou. “There was a lot of mold.”
In addition, the center was built with steps leading down to the sanctuary, meaning it wasn’t accessible for people with mobility issues. Plus, there was no separation between the worship space and other areas.
“You could only do one thing at a time. You could only have Mass. You could only have supper. You couldn’t do both,” says Father Doustou.
With the new center, designed by CWS Architects and being built by DICON, that will change. The church, named for Our Lady of Wisdom, will be separated by an interior wall and hallway from other areas, which will include a large gathering space, offices and meeting rooms, and a kitchen.
The new church will seat around 300 people and will feature a pitched roof, which will be advantageous both practically and spiritually.
“That allowed us to get some verticality to the chapel space to make it taller, and that itself is conducive to the worship of God. It raises your eyes, raises your senses upward,” says Father Doustou.
Instead of tiered rows of chairs leading down to the sanctuary, the new church will have pews, which came from the former Notre Dame Church in Springvale. It will also have stained glass rather than clear windows.
“I procured 16 antique stained-glass windows that are filled with beautiful hues of blue and amber and reds and greens. It is going to allow a lot of colorful light to come into the building, which, for many of us, is going to make time in prayer easier. Not having windows that are clear will take away from some of the distractions that happen outside,” says Father Doustou.
The chapel will also have a traditional, center aisle. Father Doustou says he blesses many marriages of couples with connections to the Newman Center who might like to be married there, but the former building wasn’t conducive to that type of celebration.
“We wanted to make this place look like a church. We needed to make it processional, not just for brides to walk down the aisle, but for the priests and the sacred ministers on Sundays to be able to walk from the back to the front. That itself is a liturgical sign of the pilgrim people of God moving towards the New Jerusalem,” he says.
To help create that prayerful atmosphere, the parish is commissioning a statue of St. John Henry Newman, who was canonized in 2019, and the statue of Our Lady of Wisdom, which stood in the former atrium, will be situated on the front lawn, along with a large crucifix.
“It’s going to be very clear as you’re driving by who we honor in this sacred space. We worship God. We honor Our Lady of Wisdom. We’re under the patronage of St. John Henry Newman,” says Father Doustou.
Father Doustou says there was an emphasis on making the new center look like a church because buildings themselves can be tools of evangelization.
“Every year, it would happen that students would arrive in the fall, and they didn’t even know that we existed. It’s partly because word of mouth never got to them or they didn’t do their research, but also, if you drove around campus, you would never know that this was a religious building. So, we want the building itself to be beautiful, to be conducive to prayer, to sing out the glory of God, and to be a beacon in the midst of the community,” he says.
That is something DICON specializes in creating. In addition to the new Newman Center, it was the general contractor for Holy Family Church in Greenville and St. Faustina Church in Jackman, and it has undertaken numerous church restoration projects.
“We know churches. They have their own requirements, and we’re sensitive to it,” says Hinkley. “Most of the guys who are here have been in the diocese a long time, and we understand who we are working for, and we respect that.”
Discussions about replacing the Newman Center date back about 10 years to Father Doustou’s predecessor, Father Wilfred Labbe. In 2018, the campaign to raise money for the center and other parish renovations was formally launched, but then, the pandemic brought the project to a halt.
“I remember just being very discouraged and praying to God, saying, ‘Listen. I’ve given this my all. I’ve thought of pretty much anything and everything that we could possibly do. I have no clue what needs to happen, so Lord, if you want this, you need to make it happen,’” recalls Father Doustou. “I was in a place not of despair but of severe discouragement, and then, within several months, there arose a donor who heard about this and wanted to help us.”
That significant contribution jump-started the project, although with new challenges. The pandemic resulted in supply and worker shortages and soaring prices for materials, which drove up costs and slowed progress.
“There was a marked difference for me between these setbacks and the setbacks during my profound time of discouragement in the pandemic in that I entrusted this to God, and when I did that and let go, the doors opened. Maybe not at the speed that I wanted them to open, but they opened,” Father Doustou says. “Every obstacle that we’ve had, He has found a way for us to overcome it.”
By 2022, it became clear the project could move forward, and the former center was shut down. In fall 2023, DICON was awarded the contract. With winter approaching, the crew initially worked on renovations to the adjoining rectory, including painting, putting in new flooring, taking out a basement garage, and putting in a new staircase to seal off an entrance from the Newman Center.
In the spring, demolition began.
“We had to handpick apart things before we could have it crushed,” says Hinkley. “It took us a little bit because we didn’t want to pull down something that was good, that we were saving. So, we cut three feet all around the building and disconnected everything.”
The office space area from the old building was preserved, but the rest was demolished and then filled in and leveled off. As Harvest went to press, the next anticipated step was the pouring of the concrete floor so that DICON can build the walls and put on the roof.
“It’s going to be bright. It’s going to be new. It’s going to be clean. It’s going to be beautiful,” says Jimmy Costa, a DICON carpenter. “I think it’s awesome for the college. It’s awesome for the full-time residents up here. They definitely need a space like this.”
Father Doustou hopes people will recognize the importance of the Newman Center to the Church in Maine and contribute to the ongoing capital campaign. He notes that recently ordained Father Matthew Valles was active at the center as were two other current seminarians. In addition, another former student is now discerning with the Society of Jesus in their Midwest province.
If you can help, donations can be made online at https://resurrectionofthelord.org or be sent to The Parish of the Resurrection of the Lord, 429 Main Street, Old Town, ME 04468.
