When Fr. Tim Hays visited Rome in the spring of 2014, he spent a day looking for statues for our sanctuary. Unfortunately, most of the items available even in Rome were mass–produced, quite expensive, and were available through catalogs in the US. At the final store, it was recommended that he look at church salvage companies in France or England. When he returned home, Fr. Tim began making inquiries to the six companies that were suggested to him, and the third website yielded a photo of our two statues. These are not new statues and have a history behind them.

They were carved by a sculptor named Ferdinand Perathoner from a northern Italian village of Ortisei in approximately 1910. At the time, Ortisei was a part of the Austro–Hungarian empire and the village was as well–known for its woodcarving as was Oberammergau in Bavaria. They created woodcarvings for hundreds of churches, monasteries, convents and chapels throughout western Europe. Perathoner was born in 1871, trained with his grandfather in the village and became a fairly well–known artist of his day. In 1906, as a way of protecting the integrity of their village´s reputation and quality control, a consortium of woodcarvers was established that lasted until the breakout of World War I. Many of the smaller woodcarving studios did not survive the war, but Perathoner continued working on a much smaller scale until his death in 1930. His grandson is currently a working sculptor and artist in the same village.

Fr. Tim was told that our statues had been carved for a convent chapel and remained there until the convent was closed in the early 1980´s. The statues were purchased by a private collector at that time and were posted on–line by the salvage company two days before he began looking. The private collector´s wish was that they are given a home in a church or a chapel where they would be appreciated and loved.

He was attracted to their beauty, scale, and color for our sanctuary space and was sure that St. Joseph´s sanctuary would fulfill the collector´s wish.

An additional gift had been made to the parish earlier that year covering the purchase and shipping of these beautiful statues, please pray for the donors and their family!