Artistic depiction of the Perpetual Adoration Chapel at St. Joseph’s Church in New York City
By Edoardo Giribaldi – New York City
Feb 20 2023
From the initial concept to the most challenging stages, Fr. Boniface Endorf reflects on his project to organize the first Perpetual Adoration Chapel in the US city of New York, which is scheduled to open in June.
While his parish community was approaching Easter celebrations last year, Fr. Boniface Endorf, pastor at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, located in the heart of New York City, realized that the project for the installation of the first perpetual adoration chapel in the city had come to a crossroads.
“I delayed the fundraising because I wasn’t getting a lot of response and got busy with the preparations for the Triduum,” he told Vatican News in an interview.
After the festivities, he sat down and said: “Alright God, if you want this to happen, you’re gonna have to help me raise the money. I am beating my head against the wall.”
The following Monday, Fr. Boniface received a call for a large donation, and every day that week, he got several other calls from people he had “never met,” raising over half of the money needed for the construction. At that point, he sat down again: “Alright, God, we are moving forward; you answered that prayer.”
First approach
Fr. Boniface’s first idea for the project came in 2020 when the Archdiocesan Office of Young Adult Outreach reached out to him, expressing the desire of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, to build the first perpetual adoration chapel in New York. “I said yes, and here we are, two years later,” Fr. Boniface affirmed.
‘A beautiful place’
“We were looking for a beautiful place. We didn’t want just a table and a basement but something where people would walk in and encounter the presence of God through the beauty of the chapel,” he said.
The main church is designed in a Greek revival style, and for the chapel “we wanted something that would harmonize with that, so we went for a plan for a Carolingian Romanesque period look but with classical elements in the space.”
Opening set for June
An international team will complete the project: an Italian contractor will supervise the general construction, and the artwork will come from Madrid. “We are waiting for the mosaics to arrive around April or May and hoping for a June opening,” Fr. Boniface said.
Difficulties and solutions
The initial difficulties in raising the money were not the only ones encountered throughout the entire project. “Construction is always tricky because there are so many details, and we wanted to make sure that everyone was ‘talking’ to each other.”
