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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Church Restoration Voted Down
By Polly Summar
Journal Staff Writer
Three church councils at San Antonio de Padua Church voted down a plan Sunday to restore the more than 170-year-old adobe church.
"It was a real disappointment," said Questa Mayor and parish member Malaquias Rael, who noted that preservation experts have put the cost of restoring the church at about $1 million.
The financial, budget and pastoral councils at the church, commonly called St. Anthony's by many parishioners, looked at the plan, according to parish staff. Rael, along with a consulting engineer and an architect for his restoration committee, was in attendance.
The church's west wall collapsed in the fall of 2008, and its roof is being held up by a number of wooden beams. A group that wants to save the church has been working since then to figure out how to accomplish a restoration.
Rael said that while the group may have lost the battle to restore St. Anthony's as the working church for the parish, they still want to save and restore it for the community.
"We have said we would support the building of a new church" in a new location, Rael said. "Just don't destroy our treasure."
Rael said the process now goes to the archdiocese's college of consultors — a group of priests from throughout the archdiocese — and then to the archbishop.
"I would hope they would ... turn over the building to a committee like ours that is committed to saving it," said Rael. "We would have to do a slow process of restoring it. ... To come up with a million dollars is difficult. But I feel that throwing down the church does nothing good for unity in our community."
Problems with the church's structure are similar to those that plague many historic adobe churches in New Mexico, Rael said. Tired of the annual remudding required to protect the adobe bricks, many churches and their parishioners decided to try a method that was considered new and improved: cement plaster.
In the old way, capillary action would draw the moisture to the surface of the adobe walls, allowing it to dry out. With cement in the plaster — either on the exterior or interior walls — the surface can look dry, but inside the adobe bricks are turning to mush.
Rael said Tuesday he thought the church councils might have felt there would be hidden costs. "We thought we had to remove interior plaster, too, because it was cement also," he said. "They thought it might reveal more cost potential."
Since the church can't be used, its members have been attending services at a nearby mission church. St. Anthony's is the mother church of the parish with mission churches in Amalia, Cerro, Costilla and Red River.
Archdiocese communications director Celine Radigan told the Journal in August that 677 parishioners throughout the parish were surveyed about what to do regarding the Questa church. Radigan said 166 people responded and indicated that they wanted a new church that looked like the old one and didn't require "high maintenance" or annual remudding.
But some parishioners believe the survey doesn't accurately reflect their wishes. They say the survey should not have been sent to the entire parish, which includes the mission churches. "They have their own churches," said Donald Gallegos then, a parishioner who is also district attorney for the 8th Judicial District.
"Why are they going to be allowed to be determining the fate of the church in Questa?" said Gallegos. "When they've had projects, remodeling, we've never stuck our noses in."
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