A newly restored St Vincent de Paul statue has taken up residence at the Catholic parish of Kwinana bear the saint’s name.
The statue’s restoration was recently completed by Archdiocesan conservation specialist Monica Podesta and transported from The Faith Centre in Perth to Kwinana, around 40km south of the central business district.
The near life-size statue took five men to lift it into the church after its arrival at the parish.
Bishop Donald Sproxton joined parish priest Father Phong Thanh Nguyen and the St Vincent community in officially welcoming the statue on Sunday, September 23, the Sunday preceding St Vincent de Paul’s Feast Day (Thursday, September 27).
Bishop Sproxton blessed the statue and Fr Nguyen congratulated Ms Podesta for her work.
The statue was originally stationed at the back right-hand corner of St Mary’s Cathedral prior to its refurbishment from 2006 to 2009.
While it remains the property of the Cathedral, it has been lent-out to St Vincent’s for an unspecified period of time (the Cathedral’s statue of St Philomena has been lent to St Philomena Chapel in Malaga, and its statue of St Anthony now resides at Cathedral House).
The statue took around 18 months to restore, an unusually long time, Ms Podesta told The Record, owing to what, at the beginning, was an urgent need to treat it for mold damage.
Back in March, The Record reported Ms Podesta’s discovery that the statue of St Vincent de Paul had originally featured gold-leaf on the saint’s cape, as revealed when many decades of paint were stripped back in preparation for its restoration.
Through their research, Ms Podesta and fellow conservationist Fr Robert Cross discovered that the statue had been made in France in 1912 and had been donated to St Mary’s Cathedral by the local St Vincent de Paul Society.