Friday, August 19, 2011

It's just a shell but to Collingwood faithful it's their church

COLLINGWOOD'S Catholics are bracing themselves to battle again to save their heritage church, gutted by fire in 2007, with the Melbourne Archdiocese making a new application to pull down the shell.

The Save St Joseph's group wants the church rebuilt and says it was fully insured for heritage replacement, up to $3 million.

They have architects' plans showing it could be rebuilt for $1.2 million.
 
Spokeswoman Mary Fenelon said the church, first built in 1861, had been legendary among the poor of Collingwood.

''Without St Joe's, the practical work of the parish and its community support activities will fall away. The community will be destroyed with the church,'' she said.

When the archdiocese first applied to demolish the church two years ago the group wrote to the Pope for help. 

But according to Ms Fenelon, they did not even receive an acknowledgment.

Temporal authorities were more helpful, with the Collingwood Historical Society, Trades Hall and local MP Richard Wynne backing the group, and the Yarra City Council rejecting the application.

The archdiocese wants to turn the church hall into a worship centre for 80 and use the area occupied by the church to extend the playground of St Joseph's school, which bounds it on two sides.

Ms Fenelon said the Anglo congregation had largely dispersed, but St Joseph's remained a crucial parish for Melbourne's Vietnamese community, with 200 people turning up every Sunday and sitting on plastic chairs in the hall.

''This is the church that gave them refuge in the 1970s and they have come ever since,'' she said.

The proposed worship centre would not even fit the schoolchildren and would compromise the relief programs run daily in the hall for the disadvantaged of Collingwood.

Melbourne Vicar-General Les Tomlinson said there were plenty of under-used Catholic churches in the inner city and it was a question of responsible stewardship.

''If the church is not going to be rebuilt, there's no sense in propping up the walls for all eternity,'' Bishop Tomlinson said.

He said the archdiocese had not profited from the insurance money, which was the patrimony of the Collingwood parish and protected by canon law.