St. Joseph Church in Leicester to be razed

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent

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LEICESTER - St. Joseph Church has overlooked Main Street for more than 150 years, but it has been closed for nearly a decade and soon it will be torn down.

Nathan Schroeder, director of facilities for the Diocese of Worcester, said demolition is projected to begin in May and that it should take two to four weeks at a cost of $160,000 to $170,000 to the parish.

Many items have been sold since November of 2014 when St. Joseph merged with St. Pius X to form St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish. Mr. Schroeder is working with the parish, and he expects the parish to profit $20,000 to $25,000 by selling any remaining items.

Mr. Schroeder said most of the stained glass windows will be conveyed, or sold, at $6,000 to $8,000 to the Serenelli Project, a non-profit Catholic apostolate in Cincinnati, Ohio, dedicated to a monastic village for former prisoners. The windows will be installed in a church that the project plans to buy and restore.

The nave of St. Joseph Church has 14 stained glass windows, and the choir loft has another five. The lower level and stairwell have some as well. The stained glass windows were restored in the early 2000s.

Mr. Schroeder said Father Robert Loftus, pastor at St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish, wants to save the stained glass windows of Mary and Joseph to build a back-lit window box at St. Pius X as a memorial of St. Joseph Church.
The pews have been conveyed to parishioners, chapels in the Life Care Center of Auburn, the St. Mary Health Care Center in Worcester and Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Webster, and to a Catholic school in Milford.

The baptismal font was moved to the entrance of St. Pius X Church to be used as a holy water font.

Mr. Schroeder said he’s close to conveying the three Carrara marble altars to Immaculate Conception Parish in Penacook, N.H., for $7,000.

Mr. Schroeder is also close to finding a buyer for the church’s organ pipes for $500 and he said the parish plans to take down the chandeliers and keep them at least for now.

The parish has removed the Stations of the Cross plaques from the church walls and Mr. Schroeder said they will likely be conveyed at some point.

Mr. Schroeder said F & D Truck Company of Millbury reduced the cost of the demolition in order to secure salvage rights. F&D Truck will hire an architectural salvage company to repurpose the woodwork.

Mr. Schroeder said he plans to ask F & D Truck to preserve the statue of St. Joseph at the top of the front of the church.

F&D Truck also demolished Notre Dame Church in downtown Worcester in 2018.

“I really wanted to see some of these beautiful items preserved,” Mr. Schroeder said, “but also it’s clear that this building needs to come down.”
Mr. Schroeder said he raised the safety concern more than a year ago that the buttresses and facade of the church had developed vertical cracks that appeared to be growing.

So he had the parish stop using the church for storage for the Leicester Food Pantry next door. After an engineer recommended last fall to at least take the facade down, the decision was made to demolish the entire church. It took time for the asbestos to be abated and for permits to be completed.

In addition to the church, the St. Joseph campus at 759 Main St. has Leicester Food Bank in the former rectory, the parish office and rectory in the former convent and a leased daycare center in the former St. Joseph School. On the other hand, the church is the only building located at the St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish, which is a mile west at 1161 Main St.

The first cornerstone of St. Joseph Church was laid in 1867 and the church was dedicated in 1870. The church was renovated and re-dedicated in 1901. St. Pius X Church was established in 1956.

Father Loftus wrote in the parish bulletin that the demolition will be a sad time for many in the parish.

“The church of Saint Joseph is a piece of history, and it will be missed,” he wrote. “However, the church of Saint Joseph is not what made St. Joseph Parish the Church and is not what makes St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish a church. We are made Church not by a building, but by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ suffering and dying on a cross for us and being raised from the dead three days later.”

Father Loftus will offer a period of prayer after each weekend Mass through June 16.

St. Joseph Church was still open when Lue Willis started as parish secretary nearly a dozen years ago. The church has been completely closed since the food pantry moved from the church basement to the former rectory next door in November of 2022.

“I feel for many of the people here,” Mrs. Willis said, “because so many grew up in that church. They got married, their kids were baptized there. So, it’s a sad event for a lot of people.

“At the beginning, it was really, really hard when they unified,” Mrs. Willis said of the merger of St. Joseph and St. Pius X parishes, “but because the church hasn’t been used in so many years, they’ve come to terms with St. Pius X being their church. But it’s still going to be a sad day.”

Mrs. Willis said parishioners would have liked St. Joseph’s altars to be moved to St. Pius X, but they were too large.

Ruth Dumas, 82, grew up worshiping at and attended St. Joseph school. She also attended the final Mass at St. Joseph Church in November of 2014.     She is now a parishioner at St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish and volunteers at the parish office.

“I feel bad because that is where I started,” Mrs. Dumas said. “It’s sad. The older you get, the more it affects you. There are a lot of memories up here, going to school and going to that church.”

Mrs. Dumas said she wants to be on hand when the church is torn down.
“I don’t know why,” she said, “but it was a part of me growing up.”

Mrs. Dumas said she’d like to get a brick from the church as a memento.

Michael Corby has been a deacon at St. Joseph-St. Pius X Parish for 12 years and he’s putting together a memorial book containing the thoughts, reflections and photos of people who worshiped at St. Joseph Church. He hopes to have the book published by the end of the summer.

“People have fond memories of their Catholic heritage as practiced at St. Joseph’s,” Deacon Corby said.

Deacon Corby understands why the church must be demolished.

“Repairing that is a ridiculously expensive proposition and I think everybody gets that,” Deacon Corby said.

Deacon Corby said people who worshiped at St. Joseph Church have mixed feelings about the demolition.

“They’re sad, but they understand,” Deacon Corby said.