Italian statue to set tone for church

MARY LOCHNER

September 04, 2008 at 11:27AM AKST

A new piece of sculpture will soon grace the landscape of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Dillingham, and it comes all the way from Italy. The marble statue of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, to which the church is dedicated, stands about three and a half feet tall. It will be placed on a rock in front of the church.

“If you walk up to the church now, you don’t really see that it’s Catholic,” said the Rev. Scott Joseph Garrett, the parish priest. “There’s a little cross on top of it, but it doesn’t hardly look like a church. I wanted something that would make it look more Catholic and more like a church.”

Scott said the church scrimped and saved for two years from rummage sales and other fundraisers to purchase the statue. The rock was donated from a leftover stash of rocks from Nome that were used in constructing the city’s boat harbor. A local Dillingham resident, Jimbo Barnett, volunteered equipment and time to move the rock into place on Aug. 27.

Scott said he selected a Nome rock for the pedestal because it looks silvery, almost like a cloud, and because it refers to Peter being called to be the rock on which Christ builds his church. In Catholic tradition, the pope carries on the calling of Christ’s disciple Peter.

Angela Clark, a parishioner at Holy Rosary, said the statue of the Virgin Mary fits in well with the landscape of the church.

“I was shocked when I saw it,” Clark said, “Because I thought to myself, it seems it’s always been there. It looks like it belongs there and it’s been there for year.”

The statue depicts Mary holding a rosary, as she was, according to Catholic tradition, reported to appear in an apparition to three children at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The message of the apparition, which Catholics refer variously to as Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Our Lady of Fatima, or Our Lady of the Holy Rosary at Fatima, was to pray the rosary for world peace.

The rosary is a Catholic form of prayer, in which a series of prayers are recited repeatedly, and in between each series the supplicant meditates on a particular part of Jesus’ life as described in the Bible. A rosary is also the name for the chain of beads that can be used to keep track of the prayers that are recited.

While Catholics are not required to believe in any particular religious apparitions, some have been investigated by the Catholic Church and validated as having been a circumstance in which a spiritual event took place, and those include the apparitions of Mary at Fatima.

Clark said it’s commonly misunderstood what Catholics believe about the mother of Christ, and how they relate to her spiritually.

“Many of my non-Catholic friends think we’re idolizing these images,” Clark said, “But we’re just using them to channel us to the lord. He’s the only one we worship. The same is true of Mary. We only worship God, and we recognize Mary as the mother of Jesus Christ, who came to us through her.”

Clark said that praying the rosary has helped bring her closer to Christ, the center of her faith, because during the recitation of the prayers, one also contemplates what are called the mysteries, essentially portions of the narrative of Jesus’ life.

“It’s a really beautiful experience when you pray the rosary,” she said. “You’re praying to God but asking (Mary) for intercession on our behalf, and we’re praying for people that we love and have special needs.”

She likened the request for Mary’s intercession to the story in the Bible, in which the mother of Jesus intercedes on behalf of a couple at a wedding who would be publicly shamed for not having provided enough wine at the celebration had not Jesus performed a miracle to transform water into wine.

Scott said he hopes the religious sculpture will help draw parishioners’ minds to Christ and the church.

A blessing of the statue is scheduled to be held at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church Sunday, Sept. 28, after the 12:30 p.m. mass.

Mary Lochner can be reached at 907-348-2348, or 800-770-9830, ext. 438.