Father Michael Ruminski highlights the reclaimed copper baptismal font now in use at Bloomfield’s Sacred Heart Church, following a recent church remodel. PHOTO BY AARON JOSEPH
Story by Shelley Wolf
Elevated on plywood, the sanctuary floor was sagging. The vinyl flooring in the nave had cracked. Over time, a church’s structure and beauty show evidence of decades of service and wear.
But after undergoing an interior renovation last fall, Sacred Heart Church in Bloomfield has a new look. Dedicated in 1963, the contemporary-style church has been refreshed with new flooring, an elevated altar, a cleaned-up choir loft and the introduction of old and new artwork.
“It looks beautiful, it’s theologically ordered, and it sounds great,” says Father Ruminski, who commissioned the work on behalf of the parish. “It’s beauty and purpose coming together. I think we accomplished a lot in the renovation to communicate all those things.”
As the former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, Father Ruminski is happy to reflect on last fall’s remodel of Sacred Heart Church. However, just this month, he was reassigned to St. Thomas and St. Timothy Parish in West Hartford.
In the meantime, Father Stuart Pinette, the new pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, can look forward to celebrating Mass in a refurbished worship space.
According to Father Ruminski, the Sacred Heart renovation, which took several months to complete, tackled vinyl floors with asbestos, tightly spaced pews, a crowded and cluttered sanctuary, and a dimly lit interior.
The solution? “It became clear the floor was the obstacle to everything,” Father Ruminski says. After talking to his contractors, the Sullivan Brothers, the solution was to “pull everything out and rethink the floor plan.”
The contractors removed the old vinyl tiles, remediated the asbestos and added brighter gray and cream ceramic tiles throughout the church. They also built a smaller sanctuary floor to better fit the space, then elevated the altar and centered the tabernacle.
With a smaller sanctuary, the original pews could then be respaced with an extra seven inches per row to give parishioners room to maneuver. “It feels more open with the same amount of seating,” Father Ruminski notes. New seat cushions added comfort and improved the acoustics.
In the choir loft, organ pipes were repositioned on either side of a window, allowing the light in. This change also created more room in the loft, enabling the choir to relocate from the sanctuary to the loft.
On the main floor, a vintage copper baptismal font replaced the old leaky one. Originally used in Bloomfield’s Christ the King Church, which closed in 1996, the copper baptismal font was found dented and patinaed in Sacred Heart’s basement. Refurbished, the font is now positioned at the head of the main aisle of Sacred Heart.
To add more beauty, the priest commissioned New Hampshire artist Eileen Cunis to create fabric tapestries for the sanctuary walls. They include four angels and two saints, Blessed Michael J. McGivney, who is on his way to sainthood, and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, promoter of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose relic is embedded in the altar at Sacred Heart Church.
The altar and tabernacle are now the focus. Statues of Mary and Jesus, once hidden in the back of the church, are now visible in side alcoves.
“The overall effect of the renovation is to give the church a much stronger sense of direction,” Father Ruminski says, “that we’re oriented, that we have somewhere to go. And that is in union with God, and in communion with Christ.”
