If you’ve driven through Waterbury, Connecticut, you may have noticed a big white cross on a mountain. It once marked a Christian tourist destination, but it lay derelict for decades. The local Catholic church has been fixing it up, and they’ve debuted a new trail marking the Stations of the Cross.
“For those of you who have been to masses up here on the mountain, you've heard me say many times that God speaks on mountains," said Father Jim Sullivan of Waterbury’s Immaculate Conception Parish, leading an evening mass on top of the mountain.
Father Sullivan’s framed by a beautiful sunset and that towering 65-foot cross. The view’s great. The whole city of Waterbury and the surrounding hills are laid out before the crowd of about a thousand people who came for mass.
“About a month ago, Father started to talk about this an awful lot," Jacqueline Welsh said, who goes to Immaculate Conception. She grew up seeing the cross from afar. “I thought, you know, that's the cross that haunted me when I was in high school, and I would be out doing something I shouldn't do, and I would see the cross, and I'd be like, I need to get home.”
But like most people in Waterbury, she’s rarely actually been up here.
It’s been decades since Holy Land USA saw crowds like this on a regular basis, but once upon a time, Father Sullivan said it drew even more people.
“We're talking about the 1950s," Sullivan said. That's when a local attorney named John Greco built the place.
“God bless him," Sullivan said. "He and a bunch of volunteers built this out of plywood and scraps and wire mesh and plaster, and he made it work. And 45,000 people would come here every year for this little mini replica of the Holy Land.”
That mini-replica was beautiful, like a sprawling piece of outsider art. But most of it’s gone today. Holy Land USA closed in 1984.
“And then it went into disrepair," Sullivan said. "I mean, everybody knows that.”
The darkest point came in 2010 — a 19-year-old woman was raped and murdered in the park.
“But the cross was always there, and 225,000 cars pass here every week and look up on it," Sullivan said. "So I think for us, it's like a revitalization.”
In 2013, some Waterbury locals, including the mayor, bought the land and started fixing it up.
“When I was running for office, all the elderly people were saying, ‘If you win, will you put the cross back up?’" former mayor Neil O’Leary said. “Our grandparents spent a lot of time here, and on the weekends especially. I mean, this was a busy place when Mr. Greco originally started it.”
A new cross went up in 2013, and the site reopened during the daytime the next year. But most of the rest of the park — including the remnants of Greco's original artwork — was destroyed or in disrepair.
O'Neil credits Sullivan with the idea to put up three new, smaller crosses nearby -- along with a sculpture trail that follows the Stations of the Cross.
“The 14 meditations on the life of Christ's last three hours on earth," Sullivan said. “Beginning with his condemnation, ending with his being laid in the tomb. What we wanted to do is to create here in this wooded area on top of this holy mountain a replication of that journey.”
After mass, Father Sullivan leads the crowd down the trail about a third of a mile long.
“Friends, take your time coming down the hill," he said as hundreds of people walk past the Stations of the Cross. "Take your time. Maybe hold hands if necessary.”
The statues are illuminated and stand out in the woods at dusk. He gives a short prayer at each one.
The site may never be the bustling theme park that drew thousands of people a day in the 50s and 60s, but Father Sullivan said it could become something better.
“In the busyness of our lives, to come here on top of this mountain and find some respite and some peace," he said.
But still — it's a nice place to hold a thousand-person mass.
