Catholic Vancouver July 01, 2022
Powell River says a sad farewell to St. Gerard’s Church
By Mark Merlino
After more than 60 years, St. Gerard’s Catholic Church in the Wildwood neighbourhood of Powell River was closed for divine worship at the end of June.
The church had been one of the three active Catholic churches of the Assumption Parish in the qathet Regional District, one of the largest and most remote parishes in the Archdiocese of Vancouver.
In the 1950s, Wildwood was home to a large community of Italian and Dutch Catholic immigrant families. Before St. Gerard’s was built, Catholics from the area would either take the Powell River Company bus or walk several kilometres down Wildwood Hill and across the river to attend Mass at St. Joseph’s in the townsite near the mill.
Realizing there was an urgent need for a neighbourhood church to serve the community, Father Joseph McInerney (pastor 1947-1958), a devout Irish priest from Liverpool, obtained permission to construct a neighbourhood church on land donated to the parish by local farmers. He asked parishioners to help build a church dedicated to Italian St. Gerardo Maiella and local working men gladly responded to his call to volunteer.
Father McInerney, being concerned about difficult pregnancies among some of the families, dedicated the church to St. Gerard, patron of expectant mothers. The parishioners responded immediately and constructed a beautiful neighbourhood church.
One volunteer was Fausto DeVita, originally from Molise, Italy. He was proud to work on construction every day before or after his shift at the mill and said it was like constructing a highway to heaven. He has faithfully attended Mass at St. Gerard’s ever since its opening in April 1957.
In those years, the Wildwood church and its basement, known as the Dugout, became a centre of community life. Father John Collins (pastor 1958-1967) allowed a financially struggling Dutch immigrant named Tony to live in a suite in the church basement for some time. The generosity shown to Tony was not forgotten and years later when he passed away he bequeathed all he possessed in gratitude to the church community.
The Dugout was also the centre for Italian social life with many meetings, such as the annual wine contest.
A few years later, the Italian Community Club built their own hall up the highway in Wildwood and so the close connection between the church and the Italian community continued. Sister Claire Sapiano, Missionary Sister of Jesus of Nazareth from Malta, who served many decades as a teacher at Assumption School, fondly remembers attending a Mass said in Italian and presided over by Father Joseph O’Grady (pastor 1967-1970) at the Italian Community Hall, soon after she first came to Powell River in 1968.
Elio Cossarin, an immigrant from Prodolone in Friuli, remembers that occasional Italian mission Masses with Father Arduino Gallanti were effective at assisting with fallen-away Italian Catholics who struggled with English language by giving them the opportunity to say confession in Italian.
Another local tradition that has been preserved to the present under the pastoral care of Father Patrick Tepoorten (pastor 2014-present) is to offer a special Mass at St. Gerard’s for the deceased members of the Italian community. At this Mass, the faithful receive candles in honour of their deceased relatives.
The Bombardir family have been at the heart of the St. Gerard’s community from the beginning. Armando Bombardir, an immigrant from Torlano in Friuli, used to run a neighbourhood plumbing shop and was one of the volunteers who built the church.
Sister Claire remembers how his wife Mary, who was born in Bagnoli del Trigno, would carry the statue of St. Gerard in her own hands around the church during the saint’s procession. When Armando Bombardir passed away in 1971, Mary commissioned a bell to be installed in St. Gerard’s in his honour.
The artisans from the Marinelli Pontificia Fonderia di Campane in Agnone, nearby Bagnoli in Molise, who produced the bell say that there is always some magic in the crafting of a bell and that every bell has a different soul.
The bell is inscribed in Italian in memory of Armando Bombardir and Devozione dei Parrocchiani - devotion of the parishioners. It also has a beautiful small image of St. Joseph, who had been the patron saint of the mill town parish. The 500-pound bell was lifted by a crane and installed in St. Gerard’s new bell tower in 1972 by Armando’s four brothers and son. For the rest of her life, whenever Mary approached the church, she would look up at the bell dedicated to the memory of her husband and make the sign of the cross. For decades members of the Bombardir family have taken turns ringing the bell.
St. Gerard’s is remembered as a welcoming church where local residents from Wildwood would congregate. The church has always remained a gathering place for special occasions and has been filled to capacity at Christmas and Easter. For a while, there was a coffee house in the basement as well as social events, including a concert with the Poppy Family, the hit pop band from Vancouver.
In the early years, children who grew up in Wildwood would attend catechism there and Father Victor Gallo (pastor 1970-1978), who himself was an Italian immigrant raised in Powell River, offered Mass at St. Gerard’s every day at noon.
Kathy Bennett, who grew up in Powell River, moved to Wildwood in 1979 recalls, “It was wonderful being able to walk to church on Sunday morning, pushing the baby in the stroller, enjoying people’s yards and the morning bird songs along the way. And in winter when it snowed we pulled our children on sleds.”
Her husband Gerry Bennett, originally from Sheffield in England, conducted the choir there in the 1990s, and large groups of children would gather together at the houses of parishioners who lived nearby for tea and cookies after Mass. In more recent years, St. Gerard’s was adopted as the home for the parish’s youth group and was the centre for various parish youth fellowship activities.
Another parishioner whose innocent nature and booming voice made St. Gerard’s into a distinctly welcoming place was Marie Castellarin, who had been born in Casarsa in Fruili. Marie lived two doors down the street from the church and kept an eye on it, occasionally chasing away troublemakers on the church grounds at night. She served St. Gerard’s as sacristan for many years, led Rosary before Mass, and ran a small gift shop at the back of the church where she found herself preferring to give the religious articles as gifts, conveniently “forgetting” to ask people to pay for them.
Since most of the original families and the younger generations have left Wildwood, either moving to other parts of Powell River or to other communities in search of work, the decision to close St. Gerard’s to divine worship was not a huge surprise for parishioners, although it was sad for those attached to the church and particularly disheartening for those who had laboured to preserve it.
A few years ago, the church was beautifully restored after a strong community fundraising effort. Although there aren’t the crowds of neighbourhood children walking to and from church on Sunday mornings anymore, the loss of St. Gerard’s will leave a gaping hole in the community’s hearts. For their living memory, the bright little church has stood there, like a lamp shining its light on the neighbourhood of Wildwood.
What happens when a church is canonically closed to divine worship? Church procedural guidelines state that “all sacred objects, relics, sacred furnishings, stained-glass windows, bells, confessionals, altars, etc. are to be removed for use in other sacred edifices or to be stored in ecclesial custody. Because altars can never be turned to profane use, if they cannot be removed, they must be destroyed.”
Sadly, it may well come to pass that the parishioners who once erected the altar, “the symbol of Christ himself, present in the midst of the assembly of his faithful” (CCC 1383), will have to destroy that same altar with their own hands.
Despite this, parishioners pray that the closing of St. Gerard’s does not lead the faithful to lose heart or forget the inspiration and devotion of those who built the church and dedicated it to St. Gerard. To put everything in perspective, it is worth reflecting on the words of Scripture: “The Lord, however, had not chosen the people for the sake of the Place, but the Place for the sake of the people” (2 Mc 5:19).