The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
RESURRECTION
Parishioner restoring whitewashed Stations of the Cross to original state at St. John Church
MIDDLETOWN >> Each time Francis O’Meara takes his brush to St. John Roman Catholic Church’s fourth Station of the Cross in which Jesus meets his mother, Mary, it’s a solemn act.
Forgive him if he gets a little emotional.
The five-year parishioner and East Hampton resident, who was commissioned to do the work by the Rev. Father Michael Phillippino, has finished two of the 12 whitewashed scenes, restoring them to their original vibrant colors at this 175-year-old Gothic church in the city’s North End.
Above each are brilliant rectangular stained-glass windows, which were illuminated by the noontime light Wednesday. The windows depict scenes of Jesus’ life.
O’Meara expects to finish the massive project by the fall, just in time for the circa 1843 church’s 175th anniversary celebration.
“It’s going to be a long haul. I’m doing this on my own time and it’s not something I do for living,” said O’Meara, who works as a web director for art supply company in Manhattan.
He’ll spend 15 to 20 hours on each one, first cleaning the whitewashed figures by sanding them down and scraping off the bumps, he said, then painting them.
“The stations are done throughout the entire season of Lent but the big day is Good
Friday,” when St. John and its sister church, St. Mary of Czestochowa Catholic Church, hold services.
Also known as the Way of the Cross, Way of Sorrows or Via Crucis, these represent Jesus’ walk to Calvary, O’Meara said. “If you go to Jerusalem where Jesus was on Holy Thursday, we have the Last Supper and in the evening, Jesus went to Gethsemane and the garden with his apostles and that was where he was arrested and Judas betrayed him,” O’Meara said.
“From there, he’s taken and put into prison. Early the next morning, he is brought in front of Pilate and to Herod (the court) and Pilate washes his hands and says, ‘I hand you over to the people who want to kill you.’”
Some modern churches have 15 stations, ending with the resurrection, O’Meara said.
The restoration is funded by donations from parishioners and through endowments made to the church.
O’Meara won’t charge for his labor, something he agreed to with one stipulation: that he work on it at his own pace.
A few of the characters in the scenes have lost their fingers — and others entire hands — so he’ll rebuild them with plaster and affix them with epoxy, said the artist, who chose the colors for a particular reason.
“I wanted to make sure I stayed true to the windows, which really pop. (Originally,) they really had a lot of color. If you look at other churches, they may have more subtle color, but for this German school of stained glass, they really are bright,” he said.
In the old Gothic paintings, O’Meara said, Jesus is wearing a blue robe, which signifies his royalty. He selected red to stay more true to the Gospel.
In Station 10, a thief mocks Jesus, pointing to the sky and God, by saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” One of his fingers is missing, O’Meara said, so he’s working to put a metal pin in the plaster and building it back up.
In another, the baby’s whole leg is missing.
“There are a number of body parts that are missing on some of these characters in the scenes — probably knocked off by someone cleaning or using a ladder — you can’t really notice them when they’re all whitewashed like that. You can’t really notice the missing parts.”
In one of the stations, in which Mary is holding her hands up, she’s missing her right hand, O’Meara said, Fortunately, one of the women who cleans St. John found it.
St. John was designed and built by Patrick John Keely. “He was the architect for churches all throughout the country,” O’Meara said. By the time he built St. John, he had designed 100 churches, and by the time of his death, he had constructed an amazing 600, he said.
“He was an Irish immigrant hired for a $7,500 contract and it took him a year and a half to get going because he had other church work: He was building the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Cleveland, Ohio.”
The parish was built to answer to an influx of the Irish, O’Meara said, but all ethnic groups came to worship in its early years.
“The Stations of the Cross was something the Franciscans, right after Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims back in 1100 and around 1200, the Franciscans came in and were basically put in charge of the holy places in Jerusalem when the Christians were able to get the land back,” O’Meara said.
At that time, the stations around the world “used to be situated outside in little chapels and people would go from one to next honoring and praying at each level,” he said.
Moving them inside the church, he said, “was more practical as an adoration.”
O’Meara will add a little sheen, using what’s called an interference color, to Mary’s blue robe in one of the scenes and paint the other figures in a flat color.
“These were painted with a slight color originally. I peeled off some of the white paint to see what was underneath and they were just a very slight patina with a gold tint on top. That’s how they were done back at the turn of the last century,” O’Meara said.
“They’re beautiful sculptures. They really are and they come over from Europe and they were all pieced together and placed in the wall. They come in sections,” O’Meara said.
O’Meara marvels at the work of Phillippino. “What he’s done to this church — the revitalizing and the painting — we’ve been blessed.”
St. John Church, at 19 St. John Square, will hold Mass on Holy Thursday at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., Good Friday at 8 a.m. and Holy Saturday at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. For Easter Sunday, Mass will be held at 8 and 10 a.m. For information, see saintjohnchurchmiddletown.com.