Please join us for
The Dedication of The Warren and Patricia Cross Bell Tower
and Rededication of The DeFazio Family Bell
Sunday, June 8, 2025
11:00am Mass
St. Paul Church
History of the St. Paul Bell and Bell Tower Project
The St. Paul Mission was established in 1906 for families in the western part of Wellesley. In 1914, land was acquired on Washington Street for a new church to serve the growing congregation. Ground was broken on August 10, 1915, and construction was completed the following spring. The first Mass was celebrated on Sunday, June 4, 1916. Later that summer a parishioner, Salvatore DeFazio of Wellesley Hills, approached Rev. Edward J. Welch with the offer to contribute and install a bell in the newly completed church.
It took Mr. DeFazio almost 10 years to raise the money, but the result was a bell cast in the finest copper and tin designed to preserve a depth and richness of sound expected from a bell weighting 3,000 lbs. The bell was blessed by Father Welch on December 31, 1926, and on January 9, 1927 it was rung for the first time as it called the congregation to worship.
In 1978, thanks to a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore DeFazio, Jr., the bell’s original ringing mechanism was replaced by an electronic system. Almost 40 years later, this system failed and the bell fell silent. A structural review of the bell tower and bell framing revealed even more troubling issues. Not only were the original wooden beams that supported the bell failing from almost a century of reverberations, the tower’s masonry and parapet were in need of significant repair. These were not cosmetic repairs, but critical issues of safety and stability.
In early 2022, Rev. James Laughlin and the St. Paul Finance Council announced that the parish would undertake an important project to replace the bell’s framing and repair the bell tower, and asked for your help. The work began that summer and by the end of the year the parapet had been fully recast. By the end of 2023, the structural work to support the weight of the bell was complete.
The final phase of the project was to replace the bell’s failed ringing mechanism with a new, state-of-the-art digital control system, which was completed in May 2024. The formal dedication of the Bell Tower would be in the spring of 2025, but we couldn’t let the bell remain silent until then! On Saturday, May 18, 2024, at the conclusion of the Vigil Mass, we joined together for an inaugural bell-ringing – all present were overjoyed to hear the sound of the St. Paul bell ringing once again after so many years of silence!
This weekend we celebrate and give thanks for the many parishioners whose financial support made this project possible. In a particular way, we honor the Cross family and their generous gift in memory of their parents as we dedicate The Warren and Patricia Cross Bell Tower. And as we rededicate The DeFazio Family Bell, we honor four generations of the DeFazio family for their gift of the bell and their more than 100 years of devotion to St. Paul Parish.
For more complete information and more photos please visit sjspwellesley.org/sp/st-paul-bell-tower-project