"A Mary of Our Own?" by Jane Harriman. August 10, 2000. The Dialog, a newspaper of the Diocese of Wilmington.
WILMINGTON -- Hoping the Blessed Mother will permanently grace the Delaware skyline, several local Catholics are trusting in prayer to help build a replica of Wilmington's famous Our Lady of Peace statue.

Our Lady of Peace, a 32-foot stainless-steel sculpture weighing four and a half tons, was created by Wilmington sculptor Charles Parks and displayed in Rodney Square in the fall of 1982. It was then shipped to the California parish that had commissioned it.

While in Wilmington, the statue drew huge crowds from up and down the East Coast.

Now Parks, 78, has agreed to replicate Our Lady of Peace. He said he would have the solid parts cast from his original molds and make her robe once more by bending, piecing and welding strip after strip of stainless steel.

The project is expected to cost at least $500,000. A site has not been selected, but local organizers want a visible spot, like Wilmington's renewed waterfront.

Instead of following traditional fundraising practices, the local Our Lady's Statue Committee is relying on a grassroots approach centered on prayer, specifically the rosary. The committee is distributing through Marian prayer groups and in the backs of churches pieces of paper they call "rosary checks," inscribed as being from "The Bank of Heavenly Graces." Those who want to help the project may take a rosary check, fill in the date and, where the check says "Pay to the order of Our Lady's Statue," write in as precisely as possible the number of rosaries they have prayed or are praying. The forms do not ask for money, and the committee has no fund-raising plans.

The rosaries may be prayed with any intention, plus the intention of the statue. The statue intention may be added retroactively to rosaries already said, says committee member Linda Prince of Wilmington. This is possible because, as it says on the back of the check, "All the prayers we have ever said are ours ... treasures stored up for us in heaven. The rosaries Our Lady asks are ours to give, a treasury of prayer for her to use. She needs these prayers now to give to her children in need."

The committee's goal is to have 500,000 rosaries said or in the process of being said before it can build the statue, a goal that implies that those who send in rosary checks or who hear about the prayer effort might be moved to send money. That approach worked for Father John Sweeney, the California priest who commissioned the original statue in the early 1980s for his parish, Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara. He never sought money, only rosaries, but ended up receiving more than the $1 million he needed to have the statue built and transported.

With only word-of-mouth publicity to date, local organizers say, more than 50,000 rosaries have been prayed. Though the committee is not asking for money, it has already received some small donations.

While the Diocese of Wilmington will do not any formal fund-raising for the project, Bishop Saltarelli has given the effort his blessing and has pledged to donate the proceeds from sales of CDs and tapes of the rosary he recorded in the spring. The recording will go on sale at Sonrise 2000, Sept. 22-24 in Ocean City, Md. The covers of the CDs and tapes will feature a photograph of the original Our Lady of Peace.

The Delaware Knights of Columbus will sell the CDs and tapes at Sonrise 2000; State Deputy William F. Galloway III has formed a marketing committee to plan sales afterward in parishes, according to diocesan Chancellor Msgr. John Barres. Msgr. Barres thinks the recording, the rosaries and the statue have the potential to lead a wonderful increase in devotion to the Blessed Mother in the diocese.

Although Parks created another huge steel statue for a Chicago man in 1998, it did not evoke quite such intense devotion when it was displayed at the USA Riverfront Arts Center before leaving for permanent display in Chicago.

"Everybody felt so bad when the statues kept leaving. We said we want one for ourselves," said Maria Johnson of Chadds Ford, Pa., a member of Our Lady's Statue committee.

Our Lady of Peace is an almost child-like Madonna, with outstretched arms and a delicate, poignant face, which Parks created using a University of Delaware student as his model. After it left for California, some Wilmington Catholics tried to raise money to have one built for the East Coast, but their effort failed.

"That was because they went the corporate route," says Prince. "This is to be a lay apostolate. We will not ask our pastors; we will not have any special [Offertory] collections."

Parks said he is looking forward to beginning the project. "If I started tomorrow, I could be finished in a year," he said last week from his Bancroft Mills studio. The materials, however, are so costly that he needs at least $45,000 at the outset, he said.

John and Colette Watson of Wilmington were the first to become interested in the project after John saw a poster of Our Lady of Peace in Angel Crossing, the Catholic book and gift shop in Elsmere. He and the store's owner, Michele Lennon, remarked how such a statue was needed in Delaware. Discussion and prayer began.

Then last July, Linda Prince and her husband, Don, accompanied their son, Brother Brian James Prince, to California when he entered a Discalced Carmelite seminary in San Jose to study for the priesthood. They met Father Sweeney and learned about his method of non-fund-raising.

The Delaware group is confident that the local prayers will also be followed by money if the statue is meant to be.

"It's really a walk in faith," says Johnson. "I think there will be a lot of people who will be interested. We'd love to hear from them, but we're not going to solicit. They will send it (money) if they're led to do that."

But Johnson believes the project will be a success even if the statue is never built. "All those prayers will do so much for the area and will be such a source of grace. With all these rosaries, I don't see how we can miss."

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"Rosary Checks for Mary Statue Exceed 300,000" by Jane Harriman.
September 21, 2000, The Dialog, a newspaper of the Diocese of Wilmington.

A month into the project, more than 300,000 rosaries have been prayed or promised as the first step in bringing a replica of Wilmington sculptor Charles Parks' Our Lady of Peace statue to Delaware.

Once 500,000 rosaries have been prayed or promised, the committee of local Catholics behind the project is confident the necessary $500,000 will follow. Although the committee has not solicited monetary donations, it has gotten about $3,000, said John Watson of Wilmington, a committee spokesman. "It's looking good," Watson said.

Parks' original 32-foot, 4-and-a-half-ton, stainless steel statue of the Blessed Mother was displayed in Rodney Square in the fall of 1982 before being shipped to the California parish that had commissioned it. The youthful, vulnerable Mary with outstretched hands, modeled on a University of Delaware student, drew huge crowds from the length of the diocese as well as parishes along the East Coast. When the statue left Delaware, a fund-raising effort failed to get enough money in corporate donations to have a copy made for Wilmington.

Recently, however, a group of local Catholics has launched a new attempt to get a version of Our Lady of Peace built. The group is using prayer, the method used by Father John Sweeney of Our Lady of Peace Church in Santa Clara, Calif., which had commissioned the original. His parish asked to have rosaries said and ended up receiving more than $1 million in contributions.

The local Our Lady's Statue Committee has been asking supporters to fill out "rosary checks," which make no mention of money but tell how many rosaries an individual "pays to the order of Our Lady's Statue."

Watson said the committee has had packets made up of rosary checks, information, and posters of Our Lady of Peace, and members are meeting with parish representatives who they hope will display the poster and encourage rosary prayers.

The effort will soon get a boost when Bishop Saltarelli's recording of the rosary and commentary, on CD and tapes, goes on sale at Sonrise 2000 in Ocean City, Md., this weekend. The Knights of Columbus are handling the marketing at Sonrise and in parishes afterward.

In making the replica, Parks will send the original molds to a foundry to be filled with molten steel. He will then put the parts together and make by hand Our Lady's flowing, lacy-looking robe, by bending and welding strips of steel by hand as he did for the original statue. Because the steel and foundry costs are expensive, Parks needs $45,000 to begin work on the project, something he has said he is anxious to do.

Rosary checks should be available in most parishes in coming weeks. Free rosaries, instructions, rosary checks and information are available at Angel Crossing gift shop, 550 S. Colonial Ave., Elsmere. The phone number is (302) 654-3232. The shop, which is closed Sunday and Monday, is off Delaware 100 (North Dupont Road) between Faulkland Road and Kirkwood Highway.

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