Fate of St. Eusebe-De-Verceil Undetermined by Officials

The fate of the St. Eusebe-De-Verceil Catholic church remains in the hands of the church officials who are asking the City of Montreal to step in and demolish their church, reports Elliot Lake Today.

The church had suffered an arson, undetermined at this time, in 2019, and has since then suffered years of neglect, numerous vandalism and most recently Tik-Tokers have come to the church looking for fame. The amount of people, the break-ins, the deterioration have all added up to mass damages and destruction of the building. 

The parish priest, 77-year old Fr. Roger Dufresne stated that people come into the parish filming Tik-Tok videos and other intruders come in as well. He claims they break doors or windows with all kinds of tools to get in the building.

The damages are extensive: broken parts of the organ scattered throughout the church, beer cans, bird droppings, debris everywhere, broken statues, and attempts made at climbing the roof. In 2019 there was a fire, that has ruined the walls. The walls now has graffiti on it stating, "the devil was here."

The Catholic Archdiocese and Fr. Dufresne hold that there is nothing left to salvage of this church. Even so, with all the evidence to support demolition, they are having difficulty in obtaining a demolition permit from the city. The St. Eusebe-De-Verceil parish has filed a court application as early as January 7 asking for permission for the demolition grant. As of currently there is no court date set. 

The church has tried in the past to have developers and companies try to redevelop the site, but cost constraints made it difficult to carry out this plan of action. The church also states that nearly $100,000 has been spent since 2017 in effort to secure the site and even hiring body guards for security. Regardless of the parish trying to secure the site, fines relating to structural integrity have accrued to $219,000.

The document also states that an estimated $50 million would be needed to repair the damages after the 2019 fire, an engineering firm had found. The engineering firm CIMA+ found that the most favourable outcome would be demolition. Montreal's real estate arm of the Archdiocese, Stefano Marrone, states that safety concern is the main reason for demolition. He also explained that police and fire forces are not keen on entering the building to deal with the break-ins, graffiti or the people choosing to climb the roof.

Marrone is hoping that the permit will move the project forward. With demolition of the church would come a redevelopment of the site, but the state of the site will have to be assessed for a developer to come on board with the plan. Marrone is hoping to have the church site used as a mixed-use site for housing and community. He claims that the church would like to maintain involvement with the space and that the presbytery would host services. Fr. Dusfresne also reaffirms this position. He would like to see the space become housing.