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Inferno can’t burn true church
True meaning of ‘church’ rises from ashes of St. Ann fire
Faith, prayer, community survive inferno’s sorrowful aftermath
By Dan Madden
As dawn extinguished night on Monday, April 21, Effingham, Kan., was a parched community.
In the dark hours of morning the small Kansas town’s entire water supply had been futilely emptied into the roaring flames engulfing St. Ann Catholic Church. Tears were likewise in short supply as hundreds of people gathered in the heat of the burning 111-year-old landmark. There were simply none left to shed.
Gene Hegarty, a St. Ann parishioner of 75 years, arrived at the church not long after the firefighters and watched its incineration as emotions threatened to overwhelm him.
“At a time like that you remember the funerals, the weddings, my own first Communion, the baptisms of my children, so many memories,” he said. “It felt like it was all going away. I know it’s only a building, but it was like I was losing a member of the family. I cried; my wife cried; there were hundreds of people crowded around and there were many tears shed.”
Abbot Barnabas Senecal, and Prior James Albers, of St. Benedict’s Abbey, and their fellow monk, Father Gerard Senecal, pastor of St. Benedict’s and Sacred Heart parishes in Atchison, arrived to support Benedictine Father Ben Tremmel and his St. Ann parishioners. As did parishioners from St. Louis parish in Good Intent and St. Joseph parish in Atchison.
Prior James, who arrived at the scene of the fire at 5 a.m., returned later that evening for a parish prayer service that was attended by more than 400 people.
St. Ann parishioners were also comforted by members of surrounding Protestant congregations who arrived on the scene and later joined them for the prayer service. Larry and Beverly Bouyer, he the pastor of Easton United Methodist Church and she of Nortonville and Cummings United Methodist Churches, arrived at 5:15 a.m. and Larry would participate in the prayer service. When Pastor Jeff Cochran of Effingham Union Church finished his duties as a firefighter, he also participated in the prayer service. Pastors and members of Lancaster, Camp Creek and Muscotah United Methodist Churches also attended the prayer service.
A bouquet of flowers arrived at the parish hall from an Episcopal congregation in Topeka that had lost its church to a fire three years before and had been offered the use of a Jewish synagogue in which to worship while it rebuilt.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time,” the card reads, “Your friends at St. David’s Church, Topeka, Kansas.” “Whatever adjectives we have in front of our names around here we’re still family in Christ,” Pastor Cochran said.
Monday evening, in a packed parish hall, as the church still smoldered next door, Catholics and Protestants waited for Father Ben’s words of comfort.
“We just have to keep reminding one another that people are the church and that had not burned,” he said.
Without exception, Father Ben’s parishioners took his message to heart. They find comfort in the bonds of their parish community. They note the teamwork that pulls together their popular annual
All that remained from the fire were four walls and the landmark bell tower, which was unable to be saved. Investigators are still unsure of the cause of the fire that destroyed St. Ann Church.
parish picnic; they boast about their choir; commend the work of the ladies in the Altar Society. They know that their parish will survive and thrive. But right now, as they look up at the steeple, charred and still towering over the town; as they gaze upon pale, scalded brick exposed to the elements, or look away from ash several feet deep, where worshippers used to sit in smoothly worn pews, the senses achingly connect to memory and it hurts something awful.
“We have older members of this parish whose dads helped build the Church,” Father Ben notes. “They were baptized in it, married in it, and they expected to be buried from it. It was their spiritual home.”
The aroma of old polished woodwork and a century of incense has been replaced by the stench of wet ash. The great 15-foot crucifix in the church’s apse, the heavy, metal baptismal font, and, oh,
those glorious stained-glass windows, those most of all, leave a void. Gone. Pulverized, melted, black as sin in a holy place. In one corner of the church a grotesque slab of melted white plaster teeters, all that remains of what was an elegant Pieta that graced the back of the church, the mother’s grieving face and the son’s lifeless body, now indistinguishable and sootcovered. Candlesticks, Stations of the Cross, vestments, statues of St. Ann and her daughter, the Virgin: all cremated symbols.
Symbols hold great power in the Catholic faith. Even fire.
From the front porch of Joe and Mary Wessel’s home, the steeple of St. Ann Church looked unscathed. But they know better. A few nights before, it was silhouetted against a ball of fire. In the days since, Mary has given into the repeated urge to go by the church and gaze upon the destruction, not so much to feed her sadness, but rather to remind herself that it’s all real.
Joe and Mary were keepers of fire for their parish. It was Joe who climbed up a step ladder and made sure that
Joe and Mary Wessel were keepers of symbolic fire in their parish. Now they mourn what fire has taken away.
the church’s sanctuary lamp was lit–a flame symbolic of the presence of Christ among the faithful. And Mary always made sure that a small candle was burning at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary.
Now the couple, married for 52 years, mourns the loss inflicted by a different kind of fire.
Father Ben, pastor of St. Ann and a monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey, points out the destruction of a recently renovated sacristy.
“The linens, the chalices, the vestments, these are all part of our faith,” Mary said. “I’m a Eucharistic minister and when I used to open that tabernacle and distribute Communion I felt like a different person; it was a strong feeling.”
She said she’ll miss the tabernacle, which was square and topped by what looked like white marble.”
“It’s like a part of me is gone,” she said. “It hurts real deep.”
But as deep as the pain is, the roots of the parish are even deeper, Joe said. “Generations.”
He said it was remarkable how many people from other faiths showed up for the prayer service. That, he said, only boosted his already strong faith in the parish community.
“We’re real strong,” he said. “We’re one big family.”
Walt and Eileen Wohletz were planning to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in St. Ann Church in August.
“We were going to have a Mass and a dinner with our family gathered around us,” Walt said. “That’s kind of changed now. But that’s not half as bad as the girl who was going to get married here on May 3rd.”
Walt has lived on the same farm north of Effingham his whole life. “I was baptized here, confirmed here, had my first communion here, went to school here, I was an altar boy here,” he said. “I served many weddings and many a funeral. There’s a big sadness in my heart.”
Eileen is scurrying about in the parish hall. She is the parish music director and feels the loss of the church’s “lovely organ,” and all of the parish’s songbooks and sheet music. Fortunately, she says, she had kept her own personal copies of much of the music at her home, and is busy photocopying them so that the parish will have music for upcoming Masses.
“Books and books of music, all the books in the pews, lots of music I had purchased through the years—cabinets full of music,” she says. “All gone; I can’t believe it.”
Eileen said that first it will be the songbooks and the organ that will be missed, but tomorrow it will be something else.
“We don’t even realize our loss yet,” she said.
Walt agreed. “Little things
