St Mary MacKillop Parish in Ballajura marked their 25th anniversary with a special blessing of the church doors on February 23.
Parishioner and local businessman Tony Mirabile crafted the doors over a period of seven days, with the help of several volunteers.
“The doors weigh 250kg each,” parish priest Fr John Jegorow told The Record.
“It took 14 men to lift it off the truck and put it into place.”
Originally designed by parishioner Armand Noor, the church doors were first put in place in 1999, but since then the unprotected doors had slowly deteriorated and were in need of urgent repairs.
Fr Jegorow always dreamt of decorating the doors with images of saints and the events of Christ’s life, but there was no easy way to create copper plaques depicting the images Fr Jegorow had in mind.
“Some years later, Tony Mirabile suggested using his newly acquired laser cutter to come to the rescue,” Fr Jegorow said.
Each image took 10 hours to create on the door.
The plaques on the doors originate from a shop full of Christian artefacts in Cologne, Germany, where Fr Jegorow visited.
“Inside the shop I found hundreds of saint plaques,” he said.
“I needed some 100 plaques weighing over 120 kg and after a rather lengthy process involving couriers, post offices, customs, and the workers of recently deceased one-armed sculptor Egino Weinert, I managed to ship the plaques.”
Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB blessed the doors before a crowd of about 900 people and challenged parishioners to get to know the story of the saints depicted on the doors who strove to follow the ideal of the Christian message.