Stuart, Ia. -- May 20, 1999
Not long after the fire ravaged All Saints Church it became obvious that those people being placed in positions of power, the building committee and the parish council, overwhelmingly had no ties or respect for the cultural heritage of the Stuart community. It was said of those individuals then and has proven to be true, "When they depart all that they will leave this community is a legacy of destruction". (Letter to the Editor-The Stuart Herald 2/96)
Now, we are seeing this happen first hand. The names are starting to accumulate of key and minor figures who had a part in the decision to throw our cultural heritage on the junk heap and have since left the community or will in the near future.
Others on the building committee and the parish council are reaching the age of retirement. Most of them have no ties to this community and will leave all this behind and fade into the dark night. People placed on these committees were hand picked by the pastor Father Richard Bergman and had the tendency to do as the church authorities wanted. As Mark Becker, the president of the building committee was quoted as saying, "the end justifies the means", and Eric Tiernan, while serving as president of the parish council, was quoted by a reporter to this comment, "It's surely easier to do as the diocese wants." (Omaha World Herald 1/97) Troubling too many were rumors even before the disastrous fire of talk suggesting a new church to be built in Stuart.
This leaves the Stuart community with a gaping wound so deep that it will be impossible to heal in the foreseeable future. The Diocese of Des Moines and local church leaders have had many opportunities to correct this situation but have chosen to look the other way, to deceive, manipulate and injure members of their own church. The only thing that the people of the Stuart parish wanted was to save their cultural heritage. Charles Willard was a sick little man who set fire to our beautiful church. As a community we could have overcome all that and become stronger from that disaster. The real harm was done by our own church leaders and those good people who sat by and did nothing.