Long Tower Church, Derry
PRESS RELEASE – BLESSING OF NEW STATUES
Monday 16th August 2010

NEW STATUES ON THE LONG TOWER ROOF
Two pristine new statues have been installed on their parapets on the Long Tower roof and were blessed and unveiled after the 10 o’clock Mass on Sunday, Feast of the Assumption.  The new statues, one of the Sacred Heart and one of Our Lady were made especially for St Columba’s Church and imported for the project.

One is the image of the Sacred Heart, and shows Christ with hands extended in mercy towards his people.  The other statue comes under the title of Our Lady of Good Success, and is the fruit of several apparitions in Quito, Ecuador in the year 1610.  Mother Mariana de Jesus, a Franciscan nun in the Conceptionist Convent, was favoured by an apparition of the Archangels, St Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael.  According to the testimony of Mother Mariana, Our Lady then appeared holding the Christ Child in her left hand and a staff in her right hand, signifying her authority.  She commanded that the holy Sister have a statue made, under the title of Our Lady of Good Success.  The original miraculous statue stands in that convent chapel in Ecuador to this day.  The sculptor also testified that he had not finished the Statue, and that it must be the work of Angels.  In all of this we see the connections between the various statues on the roof of Long Tower – angels and archangels, Our Lady and of course, Jesus, whose image of the Sacred Heart was also blessed and unveiled on Sunday. 

The statues are placed in the locations of the 1909 originals which seem to have perished very early in their lifetime.  Each stands in a valley of the roof between two apexes, the statue of the Sacred Heart facing east into the school and the statue of Our Lady facing west over the Gasyard.  They are made of FRP (fibreglass reinforced plastic) and are secured to their plinths with a two-inch metal dowel embedded 9 inches into the building.  In addition, a half-inch steel plate and a series of stainless steel bolts is holding masonry, metal and plastic together.  Each statue carries considerably more than a man’s weight and had to be raised by cherry-picker.

The two statues were unveiled by Tom Devine and Neil Doherty, members of the Long Tower Restoration Team, to the delight of the large crowd in attendance.  The priests of the parish, Fr Roland Colhoun and Fr Gerard Mongan led the congregation in procession and litany from one statue to the other.  The blessing was ministered by Most Rev. Juan Antonio Reig, Bishop of Alcalá de Henares, in Spain, who is doing a language course in Derry along with one of his priests, Fr Patxi Malo.