MARIA STEIN, Ohio (WLIO) - It’s been almost two months since Saint John the Baptist Church in Maria Stein went up in flames. Christ Our Light Family of Parishes held a special prayer service and social gathering to honor the firefighters and first responders who answered the call on May 29.
Since the fire, onsite inspections have been completed, and crews have started removing debris from the church property. As for the future of the historic building, church officials say only time will tell what comes next.
“From what I could tell, until you're faced with a tragedy, you don't know how you're going to weather it, you don't know how you're going to respond. You don't know the things you don't know yet for how to get help, right? I think, from what father said in his comments, from what I can infer that he saw this as an opportunity to lean in, to learn, to trust God, and now, going forward, those lessons will have to be put into place. They'll be led by a specific Council that's been formed that will get all the information and help discern where different paths they could take, and the community together will decide what's the future of Saint John the Baptist," said Jennifer Schack, director of media relations with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
After receiving the initial call, Chickasaw Fire Chief Joe Hertings said he knew it wasn’t going to be a good day.
“When we finally got on the road and got close, and could see what was going on. It was just like, Okay, this is the hand we were dealt today. How are we going to tackle this? We pulled up and we had four guys in our first truck, and we went interior attack, did what we needed to do, and I relied on all the area departments, all the chiefs that were up in there to give me advice, what they saw, what they thought we should do. We would run things that past each other. 'Does this make sense? Does that make sense?' Just thankful that we got the departments and the equipment around to do what we needed to do,” said Hertings.
Professionals working with Saint John the Baptist Church hope to have viable options for the church's future within the coming weeks.
