St. Josaphat Roman Catholic Church, whose 200-foot-tall steeple is an iconic site to southbound Interstate 75 travelers, officially reopens this weekend after fierce winds forced its closure in November and cast doubt on its future, Louis Aguilar reports in The Detroit News.
At a certain point near the Warren Avenue exit, the entire profile of the red-brick church is dwarfed by the modern glass towers of the Renaissance Center.
The 113-year-old St. Josaphat has been closed since 60-mph winds forced the steeple to list to one side.
“WE DID IT!,” says a Wednesday night post at the church's Facebook page. “St. Josaphat to re-open this weekend after a 10-month closure to repair the iconic steeple! Hope you can join us for Mass in Midtown on Saturday, Sept, 13 at 5:30 p.m. (English) or on Sunday, September 14 at 9:30am (Tridentine). THANK YOU.” Tridentine refers to a Mass in Latin.
Right after the wind storm, the camera-equipped drone operated by Detroiter Harry Arnold visited the steeple.
The drone cam offers a never-seen view of the 200-foot spire, which was swaying in the wind during the storm. The camera shows the steeple's curvature and missing tiles and also provides a sweeping view of the neighborhood around E. Canfield and I-75, which includes other historic Catholic churches that once formed the nuclei of Detroit's original Polish neighborhood.
In addition to the visible damage to the steeple, the drone cam reveals apparent cracking on the large golden cross at the steeple's summit.
The musical accompaniment to the drone's examination of the steeple is the Litany of the Saints, a Catholic prayer in Latin that dates from the first millennium and is chanted at various Catholic ceremonies.
St. Jospahat is one of the churches in the Archdiocese of Detroit that celebrates the mass in Latin, which mostly was replaced by English in North America in the 1960s.
