BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — After the recent closure of All Saints Roman Catholic Church, the St. Florian statue was moved to Assumption Church.
Members of Buffalo Fire Department Engine 36 helped transport the statue on Sunday morning.
About a third of churches in the Diocese are set to close and merge as part of the Road to Renewal plan, All Saints is one of them.
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St. Florian is a symbolic gesture as he is the patron saint of firefighters.
"The statue is important because a former pastor was the chaplain for the fire department and when the statue arrived at All Saints it came on a fire truck, because he arranged it, and he just loved the firemen," Diane Colby, a longtime church member.
Colby says it has been a difficult transition.
"It's just very sad that I won't be seeing my All Saints parish family anymore unless they go to the church that we're going to register at,” she says.
She says so many generational memories took place at All Saints, "It's devastating, it's heartbreaking and it's very hard."
Father Joseph Tokasz spoke to me about the transformation.
"It's not a time of abandoning it's a time of changing and a time of reinvigorating ourselves,” he says. "It's a time of change. It's an ending, but not the end, which is a blessing."
