The Valley Breeze

Iconic statue of Jesus taken to pieces

PAWTUCKET - For decades, Sacred Heart Church and its towering image of Jesus have overlooked Route 95 as some of the most visible symbols of the Catholic faith in Rhode Island.

Thousands of parishioners have entered the church, unable to miss a statue more than 20 feet above their heads as they walk through its doors.

Over a two-day period last week, the noted statue of Jesus was taken down, and with it many more of the interior symbols that have made Sacred Heart so recognizable.

The statue's many pieces now lie in a garage on church property, ready to be sold to the highest bidder on e-Bay.

House of Prayer Gethsemane, led by the Rev. Eliseo Nogueras, now owns the Sacred Heart Church building at 38 Park St., at the fork in the road where Park Street meets Fountain Street.

Gethsemane Church, named for the garden where Jesus prayed before his death, is a Pentecostal church with three locations now in Pawtucket and Central Falls, according to its members. Church leaders will likely try to sell one of those locations in the coming months, they said.

Believers in Pentecostal teachings, as well as some other Christian denominations, shun the use of statues in their buildings, according to Alex Ramos, a member of the church who coordinated the take-down of the massive statue last week.

"This is no disrespect to anyone, but we don't need statues," said Ramos. "I have God in my heart and that's enough."

Several passersby last week questioned why the statue was being dismantled, said Ramos, some growing upset as the steel image of Jesus came apart piece by piece and was lowered to the ground.

"They wanted to know what we were doing, why we were doing this," said Ramos after disassembling the statue using a crane and a group of men.

Some in the neighborhood didn't even realize that the building had been sold, said Ramos.

"We want to be respectful of everybody," he said. "We want to make sure everyone is comfortable and we don't mean any disrespect by doing this."

Ramos said the warning against "idols" or "gods of cast metal" as spelled out in Leviticus 19:4 and other passages of Scripture back up his beliefs against having statues. He said leaders at House of Prayer Gethsemane will also seek a buyer for a wooden statue found inside Sacred Heart Church. Other symbols of Catholic faith, including carvings in stone on the walls of the brick building, will be removed and likely sold if they can be, he said.

On Thursday, July 30 at 1:30 p.m., House of Prayer Gethsemane Church officially closed on the sale of the Pawtucket church, a sale made possible when the Diocese of Providence closed Sacred Heart earlier this year. Sacred Heart Pawtucket is now in the process of joining with two other churches, St. Joseph Church and Our Lady of Consolation, to form the new Holy Family Pawtucket.

On July 30, as workers removed a much smaller six-foot granite statue of Jesus and brought it to Sacred Heart Church in Woonsocket, Nogueras told The Breeze he had "no idea" how church leaders would get a much larger statue, one he thought at the time was also made of granite, down.

Cardi Corporation had volunteered to move the smaller of the two statues to Sacred Heart Church in Woonsocket, but moving the larger statue would be a monumental - and expensive - job, said Nogueras.

Nogueras promised at the time that when the larger statue was ready to come down, it would be done with the utmost care, so as not to damage it. He then found out that the statue was made of heavy steel and was bolted together in various locations, meaning moving it would be easier than at first thought.

A phone number given for Nogueras was not in service when called.

The Rev. Ronald Bengford, pastor of Sacred Heart Church Woonsocket, said that the smaller statue now at his church was erected in the late 1960s, and he believed that the larger statue removed last week was put up at around the same time.

A representative for monument company MF Graham and Son on Sabin Street in Pawtucket told The Breeze he's not sure when the larger statue of Jesus was installed. MF Graham was originally commissioned to create the smaller granite statue at Sacred Heart, he said, but the company doesn't work with statues made of steel or other metals.

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