An Easter miracle? Newly renovated chapel survives early morning blaze

Boston, Mass., Apr 13, 2023 / 14:30 pm

As Father Greg Markey, head chaplain at Thomas Aquinas College’s New England campus, opened the door to the sacristy preparing for an early morning hour of eucharistic adoration on Easter Sunday, he was hit by a wall of black smoke. 

“And immediately I said, ‘This is a fire. We have a fire here!’” Markey told CNA April 13. 

Markey could see flames devouring the floor and walls of the wooden sacristy in the Our Lady of Perpetual Help chapel, which houses tens of thousands of dollars of handmade, antique vestments, along with incense. 

He immediately sprung into action. 

Markey ran for the fire extinguisher and gave it his best go at putting out the fire, but the flames raged in the over 100-year-old wooden church, which just went through a more than $1 million renovation in 2022. 

He called the local Northfield Fire Department. As he was waiting for them to arrive, he ran to retrieve another fire extinguisher and exhausted that one as well. 

The fire department arrived and quickly put the fire out. But the sacristy was lost. The church sustained major smoke damage.

It’s unclear whether or not the vestments, some of which contain “horse hair, metal and gold threads, and stuffing,” can be refurbished, Markey said. The cost of damages has not yet been calculated.

Although the church suffered extensive damage, its structure remained stable, something that Markey believes was the work of God. 

After the fire was put out, one of the fire authorities told Markey: “You could have lost the whole church very easily. Somebody was watching over you.’”

“God was in control,” Markey told CNA. “If I hadn’t gone over that early, it really could have been a different story. So we’re just all very grateful.”

“We’re very fortunate we didn’t lose the whole church.” 

For now, Mass is being celebrated in a different location on campus. As for what caused the fire, Markey believes that it was the improper disposal of incense following the Easter Vigil Mass the night before. 

He said that one of the newer altar servers may have disposed of the foil, charcoal, and incense in the trash bin instead of leaving it in the thurible to cool overnight. The thurible is the vessel in which incense is burned during the liturgy. 

Markey said that as he was walking through the sacristy with the fire chief after the blaze, he discovered that there were no incense, charcoal pieces, or ashes in the thurible. 

“I knew instantly that was the cause of the fire. Somebody took it out and threw it in the garbage,” he said. “Where the garbage was, that’s where the heart of the fire was.”

“They probably wrapped up the tin foil and then just thought they were doing the right thing and just put it in the garbage,” he said. 

“We could have lost the whole church. We’re just so very grateful we didn’t,” he said.

Thomas Aquinas College’s campus in Santa Paula, California, was founded in 1971. The New England campus was added to the college in 2019. The two campuses have a combined enrollment of 439 undergraduate students. The college, which is dedicated to ”renewing what is best in the Western intellectual heritage and to conducting liberal education under the guiding light of the Catholic faith,” receives no funding from the government or the Catholic Church.