StoryCorps: Sr. Monique Therriault (Web Extra)

Catherine: And the other time that I wanted to ask you about was when they closed the churches in Berlin.

Sr. Monique: That was very, very traumatic. We had very few clergy – very few young men entering the clergy. When I first came here we had maybe 16 or 18 priests in the Gorham/Berlin area.

Catherine: And how many churches were there.

Sr. Monique: There were four churches within walking distance, plus the Gorham Holy Family Church.

Catherine: And the other reason was that Berlin, back in the 40s had been a city of 30,000 and by this time it’s a city of 10,000. So the population had dropped significantly.

Sr. Monique: Absolutely and we began to see that we couldn’t keep these big buildings heated. We couldn’t support them financially. So it was not only losing the clergy, or losing the priests, the ordained priests, it was financial reasons. And it was not ethical to keep huge buildings open and trying to heat them when perhaps they were not full for Sunday masses.
We had had committee meetings to examine every parish, to see which churches or which parishes were vital. Of course, everyone felt their own church was vital because they all had their very close communities. People who really were devoted to their church, and devoted to the persons in their church, and devoted to their faith. And in losing a church community, for some people, was huge test of their faith.

Catherine: So talk briefly about what you did to save St Kieran’s, because that was one of the churches that was closed.

Sr. Monique: I had learned from a local architect that it was one of the most beautiful – St. Kieran Church on Emory Street in Berlin – was one of the most beautiful churches north of the notch. And that if it should close, he said, it would be a beautiful place for an arts center. And northern New Hampshire needed a place like an arts center where people could have good programs and good entertainment and good cultural experiences. So we started a committee immediately, before we knew what church was going to close. And the committee was, if St Kieran’s closed could we have enough support from the community to have a community arts center? It would not be a church or a religious arts center, it would be a community center for the arts.
So we met for eight or nine months with a very, very active committee. Very knowledgeable people, who said, “Yeah, I think we can do this.” We still have the notes for those meetings. The committee then got really hard to work on opening an art center and I was the chair of that committee and wrote to the bishop. I said, “these were our plans,” would he give us permission or give us the building. So the bishop gave us the building for a dollar. Then within five or six months we applied to him to have some kind of funding from his fund, the Bishop’s fund. And he sent us $10,000 for the heating, to help maintain that building for at least the first year. So it was born the St Kieran Community Center for the Arts.

Catherine: Which exists to this very day. Another way you’ve left your mark on this community.