By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
This time last year, blue lawn signs inscribed with the words “Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church” were popping up all over Sea Isle City as part of a campaign to prevent the 137-year-old building from being demolished.
Now the parishioners behind the campaign are urging church supporters to remove the signs – not because they have given up, but because of growing confidence that the historic structure will be saved after all.
“I believe that the building’s going to be there forever. I hope,” said Mike Boyle, a trustee of the group Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church.
Boyle’s belief that the church’s future is secure comes at the same time that local businesses and others have come together in a communitywide effort to help pay for the removal of mold contamination inside the building.
After the mold is cleaned up, there are plans to refurbish the building with fresh paint, new windows, gutters, sheetrock panels, light sconces and possibly a new heating system, Boyle explained.
“There are so many people who have reached out to me and said, ‘Let me go inside and see what we can do,’” Boyle said of the offers from local contractors and donors to help restore the church.
In the meantime, work crews spent the past two weeks removing mold contamination from the church sanctuary and other areas on the upper floor. They are scheduled to begin remediating mold downstairs on Thursday, a process that Boyle estimated will take a little more than a week to complete.
Indoor Air Quality Service of New Jersey Corp., the contractor that is removing the mold, cut its estimate from $75,000 to $49,000 to perform the work, Boyle said. Although money is already available to pay for most of the mold remediation, Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church is short about $9,000 and is appealing to the public for donations.
Boyle noted that once the mold contamination is removed, that will allow other contractors and volunteers to safely work inside the church for the renovations.
“It’s a labor of love for the community,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
The old church at the corner of 44th Street and Landis Avenue had been closed down for more than a year before it was reopened for the mold remediation. It stands side-by-side with the modern $7 million St. Joseph Catholic Church that opened in December 2011. The new church includes a 1,300-seat sanctuary serving as the main worship hall for the congregation.
Preservationists say the old church, built in 1884, is a sacred sanctuary that has been a religious and historic landmark in Sea Isle dating back nearly as long as the shore town’s formal founding in 1882 by visionary real estate developer Charles K. Landis.
The building is an example of the Gothic-revival architectural style. It has stained-glass windows 100 years old, mahogany front doors and soaring exposed arched beams in the sanctuary that resemble the inside of a ship’s hull.
For more than two years, members of the Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church group fought to reopen the sanctuary and revive it as a place for weddings, funerals and baptisms.
Preservationists had been locked in an intense dispute with the church’s former pastor, Father Joseph Perreault, who retired in 2020, over the future of the old sanctuary. Fearing that the church would be demolished, the preservationists launched a fundraising and social media campaign to rally community support, including the “Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church” lawn signs at homes and businesses throughout town.
However, Boyle’s group has been on friendly terms with the church’s new pastor, Father Perry Cherubini, who took over last summer. As plans are being made for the church’s renovations, Boyle is calling on supporters to remove their lawn signs as a gesture of respect for Father Cherubini.
“We’re increasingly confident that the church will be saved,” Boyle said.
In addition to overseeing the renovations, Boyle’s group is pursuing a legal fight to have the old church declared sacred again, which might allow the building to be used again for worship.
When Father Perreault was still serving as pastor, the Parish Council and Parish Finance Council voted unanimously last year to seek a “Decree of Relegation” declaring that the building was no longer sacred. At the time, they said they did not want to take on the substantial debt to finance the old church’s maintenance and upgrades.
Bishop Dennis Sullivan, who heads the Camden Diocese, which oversees St. Joseph Catholic Church in Sea Isle, granted the decree. Preservationists were alarmed that the decree was a prelude to the church’s demolition.
Boyle’s group appealed to the Vatican to overturn the decree. In an initial ruling, a Vatican council recently upheld the decree, but Boyle’s group is appealing again to the Vatican’s equivalent of the Supreme Court. No date has been announced for a ruling in the second appeal.
Boyle, though, believes that the church is safe, no matter what the final outcome of the legal fight.
“We’re going to get it back to fix it up,” he said.
St. Joseph Catholic Church will not be putting its own money into the renovations, so the expense must be funded by private donations and the generosity of the community, Boyle noted.
The Save Our Historic St. Joseph’s Church group has agreed to raise the money to “completely renovate the entire structure,” according to a press release.
Boyle is looking forward to the day when the community can come together in a celebratory fundraising event, with music from a string quartet, to mark the old church’s revival.
“It’s all driven by community support,” he said.
