Historic church receives $500K grant

Christmas came early for the handful of parishioners of St. Mary's in the Mountains Catholic Church Friday as a $500,000 federal grant was announced to help church officials restore the Virginia City landmark.

Total restoration for the structure, originally built in 1869, is estimated at $1.9 million church officials said Sunday.

"The church has never received a penny from any federal or state agency, so you can imagine our surprise," said Nick Nicosia, church administrator. "We want to restore the church to its glory - to a time when it was the spiritual center of the Comstock."

The church, which has about 20 members but does not have a full-time priest, because of its small Catholic congregation, was once a meeting place for the more than 33,000 inhabitants of Virginia City and its surrounding area, Nicosia said.

"Father Manogue, who later became Bishop Manogue - for the time he was there - let all groups use the community room," Nicosia said. "It didn't matter if you were Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Buddhist or Hindu.

"It was the place you could have your service."

The National Parks Service 2007 Save America's Treasures grant awarded the half-million-dollar grant to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Reno (the church's governing body) for the restoration project, which, according to the park service Web site will "be used to stabilize and restore the church so that visitors may safely enjoy and share in the architectural and cultural legacy of one of America's mining frontiers."

In order to qualify for grant money, the church had to show it could raise matching funds. In February, a letter was sent out to those who'd visited the church or at one time been active in the congregation.

Donations were received through the beginning of this month from more than 700 people in 37 states.

"Not all of those who've donated are Catholics," Nicosia said. "We recently got a donation from a couple - both dentists - from Southern California.

"They came in and visited the church's museum and wrote a letter with their donation that said something to the effect of 'we feel this is the spiritual center of Virginia City. This may be the only donation you'll get from a couple of atheists.' It just made me well up."

Once one of the most ornate and celebrated churches in North America, St. Mary's in the Mountains has quietly dwindled to its current dilapidated state.

An interior fire ravaged the church in 1875, though it was rebuilt in 1877. When the Comstock-era ended, the church changed caretakers' hands until a group of monks agreed to manage it in 1957.

The "mad monk" era was the church's low point as it was stripped of its ornate interiors, much of which had been designed by Europe's elite master craftsmen.

"If Michelangelo had lived another 350 years, he probably would've come to Virginia City to paint ceilings," Nicosia said.

"When the church was first built, there was that much money going into it - it was that ornately done.

"But when the monks came in, they thought it was much too worldly - and spent a year tearing it apart. As a result, the church started to fall inward."

Though gunite braces have kept the church standing, many of the exterior bricks are coming off, and repairs to keep the church safe for visitors has depleted the church's finances.

"We need (more than) $100,000 in plumbing alone," Nicosia said. "This couldn't come at a better time."

Along with donations of $5 and $10, the church expects a $200,000 from the Conrad Hilton Foundation - but still is about $200,000 short of the cost of a complete restoration.

"We've gotten great news, but we still need to keep raising money," Nicosia said.

Restoration is set to start early next year, and be complete by late 2010.



• Contact reporter Andrew Pridgen at apridgen@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1219.



To donate

To donate, visit www.stmarysvc.org/donations.

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