The Saint-Jean-Baptiste church, one of Quebec City’s most brilliant religious jewels, is coming under the city’s control. The capital’s mayor, Bruno Marchand, will announce early Monday afternoon that the building is becoming public for the sum of $175,000.
“It’s a nice outcome,” said Serge Savaria, president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste assembly, about the news first reported by Radio-Canada. “We’ve been waiting eight years for something to change.”
The saga of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church, closed to the public since 2015, seems to be coming to a conclusion. By acquiring the building that gives its name to the surrounding neighbourhood, the city is freeing the church from a financial burden that, year in and year out, took about $100,000 from its budget in maintenance and management costs.
The city is buying the church for the symbolic sum of one dollar, but the total bill still comes to $175,000. This fee covers the management, maintenance and legal costs incurred by the parish church since August 2023, when it first proposed to transfer the church to the municipality.
For the factory, this outcome represents a certain “financial relief”.
“Imagine, eight years, at $100,000 per year…,” says Mr. Savaria. “We also had the obligation to assume 5% of the sums invested in repairs. It could mount up quite quickly.”
Bruno Marchand’s administration had promised to resolve the fate of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church during its first term. In 2021, the city commissioned the Institut canadien de Québec to explore the uses to be given to the building. The latter recommended that the church be opened up to tourist, community and cultural uses – a lack in the Saint-Jean-Baptiste suburb, a densely populated neighbourhood where gathering places are rare for the community.
The conversion of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church is nevertheless accompanied, according to another report commissioned by the City on the condition of the building, by a renovation project estimated at $34 million over 15 years. Ottawa says it is ready to assume part of the costs to restore the building’s luster.
“For us, it’s the best solution,” insists Serge Savaria of La Fabrique. “It’s an institution that is giving up one of its jewels to another institution. It would be very surprising if worship continued in a church that would be in the hands of the City, but as citizens’ interests became more apparent regarding the vocation that the community wanted to give it, it became increasingly clear that the City was becoming the best placed to meet these expectations.”
The Coptic Orthodox community had expressed interest in buying the church last winter, before finally withdrawing at the end of June.
More details to come.