Naperville, Illinois—Restoration of the 100-year-old Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto began last week at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery (911 E. North Ave.). Reverend Brad Baker, pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, retained Chicago-based Marion Restoration to clean and repair the Catholic monument after a century of use.
A grotto is a natural or artificial cave often used as a shrine, and one of the world’s most famous is the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto, where then 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous—now an official saint of the church—saw Marian apparitions in Lourdes, France, in 1858. The image of Our Lady of Lourdes has been widely reproduced in shrines, including the grotto at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery.
The Naperville burial grounds were established with the parish in 1846, and records indicate that the grotto has served as a prayer space within the cemetery since the early 1920s when it was designed and built by local masons Paul Baumgartner and Arthur Miller.
Parish financial accounts include expenditures for stones and freight in 1920, and the largest expenses for labor and statues were spent in 1921. “Because the final expenses were recorded in August of 1922,” says development and communications manager Michelle Dellinger, “we assume the grotto was finished that summer. Which means 2022 is the 100-year anniversary of the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto.”
Typically, there would have been a Dedication Mass to celebrate the completion of the grotto, but parish archivists Judy Chapleau and Marjorie Peters can’t find records to confirm an event took place. “But the church was completely destroyed by a fire on June 4, 1922,” says Dellinger, “so any plans that the parish made for a ceremony marking the completion of grotto would likely have been cancelled after that tragedy.” (A new 940-seat church—the edifice that still stands today—was dedicated in 1927.)
Ongoing Support
Despite the lack of fanfare at its establishment, the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto has been an important prayer space for a century’s worth of parishioners mourning loved ones at the cemetery. And Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church has been dedicated to maintaining and improving the historic structure over the past 100 years.
The first restoration of the grotto happened in the mid-1970s. In a Naperville Sun story on June 12, 1975, columnist Genevieve Towsley interviewed parishioner Rose Marie Filliben. She and her husband Clem financed the restoration of the grotto in gratitude for the intercession of the Blessed Mother for the restoration of Clem’s health following a heart attack.
“Five men worked rebuilding it,” said Filliben, as quoted in the column. “The fallen rocks were cemented back into place, and the new statues of St. Bernadette and the Blessed Mother installed.”
Lifelong Naperville resident Carolyn Lauing-Finzer, a 1961 graduate of Saints Peter and Paul School, is the granddaughter of Arthur Miller—one of the original masons of the grotto. Lauing-Finzer has lovingly maintained the gardens surrounding the structure for decades to honor her grandfather, and she recounts another improvement to the monument in the late ’90s.
The grotto’s patio was built after the Millennium Labyrinth was installed near Naperville’s Riverwalk in 1998. “The mason who did the labyrinth had a supply of extra brick,” she says, “so he donated his time and materials to Saints Peter and Paul to beautify the grotto. The patio you see out front was put in during the time we were doing the Luminary Masses.”
In addition to an annual Memorial Day Mass at the cemetery, another outdoor Mass was held over Columbus Day weekend each year. Parish sacristan Rita Schmidt organized the fall Luminary Mass for 23 years until her death in 2020.
Expert Research
The current restoration project will include cleaning and repairs to the grotto room and its east and west wings, including an archway, stairs, alcove, and storage room. Marion Restoration’s founder and owner, Mario Machnicki, is considered one of the country’s foremost masonry experts. “I started the company in 1980, so we've been in business for quite a long time,” says Machnicki. “We’ve been retained by Peter and Paul to restore this beautiful grotto with a custom mortar to match the original. Because it’s a 100-year-old structure, we’ll be finding materials not commonly used these days.”
His research also includes pinpointing the source of the original stones, and Machnicki started this search by visiting Larry Bromberek from Bromberek’s Flagstone Co. in Lemont, with a stone sample in-hand. “I was under the impression that he might know where this kind of stone came from,” says Machnicki. “He’s been in business for at least 100-some years because it's a business that he took over from his father and grandfather, so they are familiar with the stone rock formations in this region of the country.”
Bromberek did in fact recognize the stone, but it’s no longer locally available. “He was able to identify this as a stone that comes lately from Kentucky, but he told me that the quarry just closed four years ago. Unfortunately, it's no longer available, but he has some possible way to get enough material to install on the dome of the south portion of the grotto.”
As the search for replacement stone continues, Machnicki’s crew will continue to clean the monument of surface soiling and grime, which developed over time due to pollution and moisture. Then the east and west wings will be dismantled and rebuilt using original and sourced limestone and new mortar. Roof, stairway, and archway repairs will include the installation of waterproofing membranes as well as galvanized steel supports. The work will take approximately four to six weeks, depending on the extent of the structural damage as well as the weather during the restoration process.
The restoration of the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto is being funded by donations made for the Luminary Masses over the years, as well as regular contributions by parishioners who understand the importance and legacy of the local Marian shrine.
“It's goodwill and philanthropists and generous people who want the cemetery to be a place of reflection and repose,” says Finzer when explaining the grotto‘s significance to mourners. “Sometimes you will find coins placed in the joints of the stones. Quarters are for veterans. It's all serendipitous, and they are small blessings in the schema of the grotto.”
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Saints Peter and Paul was founded in 1846 and is the oldest established parish in DuPage County—currently one of the most active in the Diocese of Joliet. Throughout its history, the parish has been a vibrant and vital part of the Naperville community through dozens of ministries that focus on parish life, worship, evangelization, and Christian service. Today Saints Peter and Paul School educates over 475 students in preschool through grade 8, and the parish serves over 4,000 families. Its campus includes seven buildings—including its stunning Gothic edifice with bell tower—on a seven-acre campus in the heart of Naperville, a Chicago suburb with a population over 145,000.
VIDEO AND PHOTOS
Video interview of Carolyn Lauing-Finzer: https://youtu.be/jpXnY2zIdCQ
Video interview of Mario Machnicki: https://youtu.be/rH2qGbRKLks
Ss. Peter & Paul Church | 36 N. Ellsworth, Naperville, IL 60540
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