‘A whole year’s worth of progress’ at Our Lady of the Rosary, Crozet

Renovations at Our Lady of the Rosary, Crozet during Mass on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Dec. 22, 2024. (Photo/Joe Staniunas)

As he began his homily on the Fourth Sunday of Advent at Our Lady of the Rosary mission in Crozet, Deacon Mark De Rosch said he hadn’t been in the church in about a month. “It’s amazing to see what your gifts of time and treasure have produced,” he said.

The interior of the former branch bank has been transformed since Bishop Barry C. Knestout blessed it in October 2023. Pews have replaced folding chairs. A large crucifix hangs on the wall of the sanctuary, flanked by statues of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph. The ceiling has been painted and decorated with stars. The huge metal door to the safe deposit room is gone.

“It’s been a whole year’s worth of progress,” said Msgr. Timothy Keeney, pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary and Church of the Incarnation, Charlottesville, in a phone interview after the holidays.

“I think the day that the pillars on either side of the cross went up – and the cross was up there – and the statues went up, and then the stars,” he added, “was the day that you just got people going ‘wow,’ and saying, ‘this doesn’t look anything like a bank anymore.’”

Like a traditional bride, the mission community now wears a mix of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. As worshipper Dennis Hogberg said after that Fourth Sunday of Advent Mass, “It’s really Catholic now.”

Father Joseph Indadaño, parochial vicar, celebrates the first Mass allowing full occupancy in August 2024, before the renovation. (Photo/Joe Staniunas)

Old becomes new

After moving into the building and starting renovation, the community had to limit the number of people who could attend Mass because of fire safety laws. So, one of the first tasks was to create an additional entrance and exit with wide, glass double-doors where the old drive-through window was.

By summer 2024, the work was done and the community, now numbering 250 households, could celebrate Mass under the expanded occupancy permit in August. “It’s just wonderful to see all the seats filled and the joy of everybody, because this has been a long time coming, especially some of the people that have been here from the very beginning,” said Jodi Sell, one of the worshippers that morning.

“I decided I definitely needed to get here early, because I knew the seats would be packed and they were,” said Michelle Brooks. “And it was wonderful to see all the friendly faces and the familiar faces that we’ve been seeing for all these years all together.”

The pews are one of the old parts of the new church. They came free from a Catholic church in Pittsburgh that closed, though the Crozet mission did have to pay freight charges. “It really makes it look like a church now,” said Eileen deCamp, sacristan and extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, as she checked the flowers and the altar linens on that summer morning.

“It’s sad for them that they’re losing, you know, a Catholic church up there,” she said. “But it really helped us, we needed them.”

It’s helped that the pews are portable. Several times in the past few months, people have been recruited to move the pews after Sunday Mass – to allow painters access to the walls – and then move them back for weekend liturgies.

Our Lady of the Rosary volunteers often had to move pews to let painters work during the renovation. (Photo/Joe Staniunas)

The cross in the sanctuary is repurposed as well. It was a gift from the late Msgr. R. Roy Cosby, a priest in the dioceses of Richmond and Arlington who died in February 2024. He knew the cross wasn’t being used, so he arranged a donation, Msgr. Keeney said.

Seeing stars and roses

It’s not hard to find something blue in the building. Some of the sanctuary wall is a light shade of that hue. So is the ceiling, but Msgr. Keeney wanted another feature 19 feet above the floor – stars.

The person he asked to carry out his vision was Heidi Brown. After talking to the company that decorated the domed ceiling of St. Thomas Aquinas in Charlottesville, she said she realized painting the stars would be expensive. The best option seemed to be decals – easy and quick to apply. Brown found some online that the monsignor approved, but he left the pattern up to her. She said she bought some drywall and tried out various spacings until she had one that the monsignor thought was perfect.

A few days after Thanksgiving, the church rented a scissor lift, and with a little practice, she was ready to go. “I took a few laps in the parking lot to make sure I wouldn’t knock any altars over before I took it inside,” she said.

With help from her husband and friends Kimberly Gale and Sue Massuch, Brown placed the stars across the ceiling, from front to back, side to side. “We have touched every single star and every point up there,” she said. “We counted them … 455 stars.”

She’s hoping to add a few more in spots that look empty. “I love it,” she said, glancing up at her work. “I really do.”

Augusta County blacksmith Dave McKinnon loves what he does, too, and is always looking for a new canvas. He found it when he joined the mission last year. He had been working on fashioning metal stands for a couple of votive candle racks salvaged from closed churches in Philadelphia and wondered if Our Lady of the Rosary wanted one.

Lena Herlihy (lower right) and Julie Bowns work on a sanctuary linen, near one of the votive racks made by Dave McKinnon. (Photo/Joe Staniunas)

Msgr. Keeney said he’d like two, along with some sconces. But each rack had a different design. “I wasn’t sure how to approach the issue of making two alike for the monsignor,” Dave said in an email. “He told me he wanted only 25 candles, not 50, and that he’d like three roses on the stand, a container for the lighting sticks and sand to put them out in, and a cash box mounted in the front.”

So, he designed and forged a new rack to match the one that he liked the best and added the other elements. The sconces also have roses. McKinnon had a little help from music and liturgy minister John Kronstain’s son, Thomas. Along with fleur-de-lis, images of roses also adorn the wallpaper behind the crucifix in the sanctuary, the rose motifs an allusion to the Crozet flag.

As for something borrowed, placed on the table behind the altar are a tabernacle and sanctuary lamp, on loan from Dixon Studio in Staunton.

The mission community has plans to renovate the space downstairs to add a small kitchen, restrooms and meeting rooms, but that depends on finances and will have to come later. The main task this year is to finish the worship space, which means installing more lighting, new carpeting, and a permanent predella, or platform, for the altar.

Msgr. Keeney said he hopes all that work can be completed sometime around Easter. He then hopes to invite Bishop Knestout back to Crozet, to consecrate a building where a Catholic community has replaced the signs of commerce with symbols of faith, old and new, borrowed and blue.

 

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