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 at 11:00am Mass
St. Paul Church
Reception following on the Church Lawn
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, and 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 3000 lbs.
The bell was blessed by Father Welch on December 31, 1926, and on January 9, 1927 the bell was rung for the first time as it called the congregation to worship.
A generous gift from Salvatore DeFazio, Jr. and family in 1978 provided for a new electronic ringing system to replace the original ringing mechanisms. Almost 40 years later this system failed, and the bell fell silent.
A structural review of the bell tower and bell framing revealed more troubling issues. The original wood beams that supported the bell were weakened by almost a century of reverberations, and the tower’s masonry and parapet were in need of significant repairs. 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 on the bell tower and the replacement of the bell’s framing began in July 2022.
By early August, the team had begun removing sections of precast stone from the parapet to send to Northern Design, an architectural precast stone firm, so they could begin building the molds and forms to be used to precast the elements of the new parapet.
By the end of the year, the parapet had been fully recast. The only outdoor work remaining was to repaint the front façade pieces (that had been painted in a different shade several years ago) with a special mixture of paint to exactly match the rest of the tower so it would be completely uniform once again.
The interior work on the bell supports was scheduled to begin in January 2023 and be completed by the spring, but vendor and supply-chain delays added months to the project timeline.
Finally, by October 2023, the structural work, including new beams to support the weight of the bell, was complete, and the front facade had been repainted.
The final phase of the project was the installation of a new, state-of-the-art digital bell control system, which was completed in May 2024.
The formal dedication of the Bell Tower would not take place until 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, and all present were overjoyed to hear the sound of the St. Paul bell ringing once again, after so many years of silence!
On Sunday, June 8, 2025, we will 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.