“When I used to come here for Sunday Mass, the church was always nice. This is a sign of love for the church building. I want to be with you at this very moment, now that we see that the church has vanished in so little time”. The Bishop of Rotterdam, Mgr. Hans van den Hende, said this as he met with the inhabitants of Hoogmade, the village in which a fire broke out at about lunchtime yesterday, engulfing and destroying the bell tower and most of the parish church, in just a few hours. The church was undergoing restoration work. Today the website of the diocese of Rotterdam reports that the bishop met the Catholic community in a brasserie of the village yesterday evening.
“I am pleased that you, living stones, have remained unscathed”, the bishop said. “I promise that I will pray with you and we will be able to move forward once the shock is over”. The Church’s bell tower, which collapsed, “stood as a green copper needle in the landscape”; you could spot it from far away, the bishop recalled. The firefighters prevented access to the residents within a 50-metre radius of the Church, and several families had to spend the night away from their homes. Parish priest Jack Glas, from the Hoogmade-Woubrugge pastoral unity, to which the church belongs, said he “immediately rushed” to the scene when he learned about the fire. “At the beginning, I saw the smoke and thought that perhaps it was not serious. But then I saw the church engulfed by flames, I could not get any closer and I felt overwhelmed”.