A church dating back to the 1950s will disappear from the Montreal landscape. Closed in 2013 and abandoned since then, the Saint-Bernardin-de-Sienne church, located in the Saint-Michel district, will be razed to make way for another place of worship. The City of Montreal has just removed the church from the list of buildings of heritage and architectural interest in order to allow its demolition.
More than a decade of neglect has left its mark and the church is in such a state of disrepair that a minimum investment of $9 million would be required to restore it. Contemporary in style, the Saint-Bernardin-de-Sienne church was built in 1955 according to plans by the architectural firm Duplessis, Labelle, Derome. In its 2003 inventory, the Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec gave it a C (superior) rating.
In 2013, the Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension borough ordered its closure for safety and sanitation reasons. The church was subsequently left without heating or maintenance, before falling prey to vandals. The presbytery having burned down twice, it had to be urgently demolished in 2019. Since the stained glass windows were not protected, they either disappeared, were cracked or broken. Many other decorative elements as well as the furniture were severely damaged or vanished. As for the bell tower, its spire had to be removed and the structure was deemed unstable.
The site was finally sold by the factory in 2019 to the ecclesiastical corporation Christ in action evangelization, which now wants to raze what remains of the church to build a new place of worship.
A “pathetic” case
In a preliminary opinion dating from 2021, a joint committee bringing together the Montreal Heritage Council and the Jacques-Viger committee deplored the fact that the building was being demolished, questioning the fact that the structure of the church was beyond repair.
In May 2024, as the building continued to deteriorate, the committee finally resigned itself to the building being removed from the list of buildings of heritage interest. “The Saint-Bernardin-de-Sienne church remains a modern heritage building of great interest. However, given its state of disrepair, it is clear that the ability to appreciate the architectural, artistic and landscape qualities of the church has been lost,” stated the committee’s opinion.
For Dinu Bumbaru, policy director at Heritage Montreal, this scenario of a church left abandoned until there is no choice but to demolish it is all too familiar. “It’s a pathetic case,” he says.
Like other organizations, Héritage Montréal had placed a lot of hope in the City’s new by-law on the occupation and maintenance of buildings aimed at protecting abandoned buildings and which came into force in October 2023. But its real implementation is slow, as was recently noted The Duty. “It’s hard to be convinced that this is a wise decision. [de permettre la démolition de l’église] “, says Mr. Bumbaru.
The future of threatened or disused churches has been the subject of discussions for over 20 years in the metropolis, but the problem remains. “Saint-Bernardin-de-Sienne is one case, and we can be saddened by this particular situation, but we must not forget that there are dozens of others coming,” says Dinu Bumbaru.
The Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec has a budget to support church maintenance and restoration projects, but demand outstrips supply, says Jocelyn Groulx, the organization’s executive director. “We’re seriously short of money for all the needs,” he says.
In 2003, the Council listed 468 places of worship of all faiths on the territory of the Island of Montreal. Over the past 20 years, 13 have been demolished and 98 others have been closed, sold or transformed.
Some recovered items
In the Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension borough, it is maintained that over the years, the owners have been warned on several occasions that work was required to maintain the church. Last month, the borough’s mayor, Laurence Lavigne Lalonde, however, stressed that the case of churches was special. “We don’t want to give a $250,000 fine to an owner who already doesn’t have the funds to carry out renovations that could cost thousands of dollars. And that would be less money to maintain the building,” she said in an interview with theEast Media Montreal.
The new building that will replace the old church, and whose construction cost is estimated at 20 million, will have a capacity of more than 1,500 people. It will have an oval shape to recall that of the roof of the current church. The church bell tower is too damaged to be preserved, but a tower will be built in the same place to become a landmark in the urban landscape, indicate the city documents. The interior lighting fixtures of the church will be installed in the new building and the stones of the exterior cladding will be integrated into its architecture, it is specified.