After years of planning and thousands of volunteer hours, the Catholic Church officially blessed the recently renovated St. Isidore Parish in Plamondon.
Reverend Luc Bouchard, along with visiting priests and deacons, and a full Knights of Columbus Honour Guard were on hand Nov. 6 for the special ceremony. Bouchard, the bishop for the St. Paul-Lac La Biche region, blessed the renovated space with holy water and a sermon.
“The community did a wonderful job,” Bouchard said after the service. “Parishioners should be commended for their work and patience.”
Patience because the project was years in the making: planning and fundraising for the renovations began in the late 1990s.
Thousands of hours of work – many of them done by volunteers – went into the overhaul. Completed last summer, the parish now has a new basement area that can be used for community events; brand new pews, carpeting, lighting, and projectors; a reworked alter area; and an arched, white ceiling to replace the previous dark-wood, drop ceiling.
Although the church looks a lot different, there are still old touches like the refurbished chandelier from the 1920s hanging from the ceiling, the stained glass windows, and much of the artwork hanging on the walls.
After the blessing, the community gathered at the Festival Centre – another example of a Plamondon development aided by thousands of volunteer hours – for a free meal prepared by volunteer cooks. Richard Mahé, a parish council member, thanked the crowd for all of the hard work that went into the renovation project.
“It was the volunteers who gave with conviction, whether it was financial, time, talent, trades, or labour,” Mahé said, noting there were dozens of groups and individuals who gave freely and consistently.
Caroline Giammarioli, coordinator for the blessing, said the ceremony was an affirmation of the hard work the community put into the project.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you all the hours that people worked for free,” Giammarioli said, noting that the electrical work, normally $75 an hour, was done for no cost. “There’s something in Plamondon that’s unbelievable – it’s priceless; you can’t put a dollar value on that.”
The renovations started the week after Easter Sunday 2009 and were completed in June of last year. During that time, the parish travelled to Atmore for Sunday service. Giammarioli said the work and time paid off the first time the community got to attend mass in the new space.
“It was quite a beautiful thing,” she said of the first Sunday in the renovated church. “People gasped – it was just awesome.”
St. Isidore, which was built in 1927, is a place people can be proud of and worship in for years, Giammarioli said.
“I see the pride people have – their grandparents worked to build that church and now they know that they’ve carried on that legacy.”
