(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Restoration work is getting underway on a 100-year old grotto in Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Naperville.
The Our Lady of Lourdes grotto is used as a quiet space for people to remember their loved ones, says Michelle Dellinger, development and communication manager for Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church.
She said Marion Restoration will do the work over a four- to six-week period, which is expected to be completed before Memorial Day Mass at the grotto.
Dellinger says the restoration company is trying to locate the same kind of stone originally used to build the grotto in 1922. So far, the only hope may rest with the grandson of one of the grotto’s original masons, who supposedly has the same kind of stone on his Naperville property. Marion Restoration also plans to fashion the same kind of mortar used 100 years ago.
Every fall at the grotto, Dellinger said, a Luminary Mass is celebrated at the grotto in memory of people’s loved ones who’ve died.
Dellinger says Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church no longer runs the cemetery. The Diocese of Joliet does. But she said the church still cares for the grotto.
The cost to restore the property will be as much as $42,000, she said. Church records indicate the original cost to build the grotto was about $2,000. According to a government inflation calculator, the original $2,000 cost would be about $33,575 today.
Collections taken for decades at yearly Luminary Mass at the grotto are covering the restoration work.
This will not have been the first restoration of the grotto.
“There was another restoration that was done in the 70s by a parishioner. It was kind of a Thanksgiving. Her husband had had a heart attack and he had recovered,” Dellinger said.
In the 1980s, extra brick from the Naperville Riverwalk was used to construct a patio in front of the grotto.
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