Former St. Gerard's parishioners to visit new site

[didymus]

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Former St. Gerard’s parishioners to visit new site

Twenty people who were parishioners of the now-closed St. Gerard Roman Catholic Church in Buffalo, N.Y., will make the 900-mile trip to Norcross next weekend to visit the building’s future home.Mary Our Queen Catholic Church is buying the structure, which was closed in 2008, and relocating it to Gwinnett County to replace its outgrown space.
Compare it to a visit by anxious parents to the home of a newly-independent son or daughter.

“You want to know where the child will be residing in the future,” said Richard Ciezki, 81, a longtime St. Gerard’s parishioner and an organizer of the trip. “We’re really looking forward to meeting the people who will populate the building after it goes down there. We’re very excited that the church building can be moved and used for the purpose for which it was built by German immigrants in the early 1900s.”

St. Gerard’s membership had dropped from 1,600 families in the 1960s to 100 when it held its final mass on Jan. 5, 2008.
Meantime, Mary Our Queen on The Corners Parkway was growing.The membership wanted to build another church on nearby land and was looking to buy pews, choir stands and other fixtures from closed churches. In that process, the decision was made to buy an entire church rather than pieces. To construct a church from scratch, with the same quality of materials, officials said, could cost as much as $40 million.
Buying and moving St. Gerard’s will cost about $16.5 million. Recently, Mary Our Queen hired a professional fundraiser for the project and has so far raised about $3 million.

I certainly hope they succeed.
I know this is a rare case but there are so many beautiful old churches closing in our diocese I wish at least the sanctuaries and side altars could be salvaged and given new homes.