Even before Aurora firefighters had finished sifting through what remained of Sacred Heart Church on Tuesday, stunned parishioners spread the word that their prayer group would hold an evening service outside the burned church.
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They wanted to use the opportunity, they said, to grieve for the century-old structure that authorities believe was destroyed Tuesday morning by arson and to renew their bowed but unbroken spirits.
“We are a very loving community, like a big family. This is like a death toll,” said Dick Groom, a church deacon and member since 1942, as he watched fire crews clean up debris.
Little of the building remained standing, except the outer walls and the church bell, perched precariously in the gutted steeple. It was unclear Tuesday what would happen to the building, at 125 N. State St. on the city’s near east side, but fire officials declared the structure a total loss.
By late Tuesday, officials had not determined an exact cause of the fire, which they termed “incendiary.” But they said a nearby church-owned building was vandalized overnight and a rear door to the church was open when firefighters arrived.
“We are looking for a link,” Aurora Fire Marshal Marty Kunkel said.
Agents from the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Illinois State Fire Marshal have joined local authorities in the investigation, Kunkel said.
Neighborhood resident Jesse Lasait said he saw smoke in the chimney about 5 a.m. and called the Aurora Fire Department.
“It was gone so fast,” Lasait said, as his wife, Margaret Lasait, videotaped the scene from their home across the street.
Kunkel said the first fire crews arrived about 5:05 a.m. and found heavy smoke rising from the basement on the east end of the building. Firefighters tried but failed to enter the building through the basement, he said.
“The heat just drove them back out of the basement,” he said. “They couldn’t stay in.”
Fire crews then decided they would fight the blaze from the main level but discovered the sanctuary engulfed in flame. Within the first 15 minutes of their arrival, Kunkel said, fire crews determined the building probably could not be saved, so they fought the blaze from outside the brick walls.
The two-alarm blaze was brought under control about three hours after it was discovered, Kunkel said.
“I can’t believe anyone would do this,” said Sandra Rocha, who had planned to be married in the church next year. “Even gang members would attend the mass; they would always respect this church right here.”
“I feel an emptiness in my heart, like a hole in that wall,” said Claire Messmer, a parishioner for more than 60 years. “We are such an intimate, small church that everybody knows everybody.”
Among items lost in the blaze were photographs of Messmer’s deceased loved ones, including her husband, Matthew Messmer, who was eulogized in the church 12 years ago. During November, pictures of the dead are left at the altar during daily mass.
Sacred Heart serves about 480 families, many of them Hispanic, according to Owen Phelps, director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Rockford.
“We are a small church, a bilingual church, but we are a family,” said a tearful Marilyn DeCelles, a parishioner for more than 50 years. “I feel so devastated, but the one good thing that has come out of today is that nobody was hurt.”
“The unique thing about this parish is that the people here are common people,” said Craig Hall, a member of the parish council. He and his wife, Tina Hall, drive to church each week from their home on Aurora’s far west side. The Halls were married inside Sacred Heart about 18 months ago.
“This is not a parish with the thrills and frills of society,” Hall said, “but it is people of all nationalities who can put their differences aside and pray to God.”
The parish’s roots date to 1851, according to church records. The original church structure burned a month before the current Sacred Heart parish was founded in 1868.
Aurorans of French heritage took the Sacred Heart name for a church they were building and laid the cornerstone for the structure in 1898. Despite its heritage, the building was not a historic landmark, city officials said.
Groom, who saw three of his eight children married in Sacred Heart, said church elders were so concerned about fire that they never put candles in the Advent wreath.
“We were very fire-conscious,” Groom said.
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He said he was in the building until about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday and noticed nothing amiss.
The church underwent major renovations in 1972, church officials said. The building’s heating system and water heater were replaced after the devastating 1996 flood. A recent $10,000 gift from an anonymous donor had allowed church officials to order recently some minor repair work.
Bishop Thomas G. Doran, head of the Rockford diocese, issued a statement Tuesday calling the blaze a “shocking tragedy.” The diocese announced that the parish’s three weekend masses, two spoken in Spanish and one in English, would be conducted in the church’s nearby parish hall, at 770 Fulton St., which was not damaged by the fire.