A look inside the Philadelphia Archdiocese's unique icons market

 

By Jack Tomczuk, STAFF WRITER

On the first Wednesday of every month, 20 to 40 priests and a few laypeople descend on St. Charles Borromeo Seminary for a flea market like no other.

In a large, nondescript room at the rear of the seminary's massive College Division building, thousands of icons, religious artifacts, and other hardware from shuttered churches throughout the Archdiocese of Philadelphia are on sale for members of the clergy from across the nation. Laypeople are normally prohibited, but they may purchase items for their parish if they have a letter from their pastor.

Large statues, stained-glass windows, crucifixes, tabernacles, and confessional booths are just some of the items available to priests looking to spruce up their chapels and parishes.

The Rev. Ronald Check, who was ordained in 2007 and is assigned to Resurrection of Our Lord in Rhawnhurst, is one of the most frequent visitors to the market, officially called the Ecclesiastical Exchange.

"I go frequently because I like to get these things from old churches and bring them back to life," said Check, who also is chaplain at St. Hubert's High School for Girls.

Outdoor statues are among the most popular, according to Ed Rafferty, who runs the exchange for the archdiocese.

After All Saints Church in Bridesburg closed in 2013, the Rev. Joseph Howarth, Resurrection's pastor, purchased a stone Sacred Heart of Jesus statue for his parish garden.

When parishes merge, one of them becomes a "worship site," which usually means it no longer holds Masses but it may host weddings, funerals, and similar special events. If the mother parish is unable or unwilling to keep the worship site open, it is closed for good and is no longer a Catholic church.

That is when the exchange begins the process of shutting down a holy site.

Rafferty's team collects all items of spiritual value and stores them in a warehouse filled with protective fences.

Rafferty inventories the items and prices them based on condition and what he believes his customers want. The tag lists an "asking amount" that is negotiable.

"The asking amount reflects the value of the piece but also the main mission - which is to get things placed," Rafferty said.

Asking amounts vary widely, from under $10 for a cruet (a small vessel that holds the wine for Mass) to thousands of dollars for marble carvings or stained-glass windows from Germany.

All proceeds go to the merged parish that absorbed the closed church's debts and expenses.

Rafferty, 61, of North Coventry Township in Chester County, views his job as consisting of two sometimes conflicting duties: to place the items and to do his best for the merged parish, which is often struggling itself.

"I consider the items not mine," he said. "I'm trying to do the best for the parish it came from."

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua created the exchange in 1992 when the first round of church closings occurred, Msgr. Louis D'Addezio said. D'Addezio, now retired, was the first coordinator of the exchange.

Since 2011, the city has absorbed 24 parishes and the four surrounding counties have absorbed 23, though some churches from both areas have stayed open as worship sites.

These closures have flooded Rafferty's warehouse with artifacts and, subsequently, customers from as far as Florida, Arizona, and Texas in search of items that simply aren't made anymore.

"One of the most unique things was how we placed stained-glass windows from our older churches," D'Addezio said.

He said Bishop Michael Francis Burbidge of Raleigh, N.C., who studied at St. Charles Borromeo, purchased stained-glass windows from the shuttered Ascension of Our Lord church in Harrowgate to use for a new cathedral under construction in Raleigh.

Rafferty said that churches built after the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965, adopted a modern and simpler design that shunned many of the ornate features of older churches. That trend has reversed, he explained, swinging back toward the more traditional.

D'Addezio said a few suburban churches have re-created this atmosphere by replicating a closed urban church.

For example, after a church fire in 1991, St. Monica's parish in Berwyn rebuilt the building with many items from the now-closed Corpus Christi in North Philadelphia.

Rafferty, who has headed the exchange for the last 10 years, maintains the items at the warehouse so that they do not go into disrepair. The artifacts, some of which have a special meaning to longtime parishioners of closed parishes, are never offered to private collectors.

"The big thing is using it in another appropriate setting," he said.

JTomczuk@phillynews.com @JackTomczuk

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