Honoring a 150-year connection, the Episcopal Church has welcomed the Orthodox Serbian congregation into St. George’s Episcopal Church, the New York Times reports. Other good news includes the sound condition of the St. Sava Cathedral, which the church plans to rebuild.
From the article:
Lidija Nikolic, a board member, said that despite the damage, the building’s structure was intact and that they would try to rebuild it. She noted that the church was insured and had received around $8,000 a day in donations since the fire, but that those amounts would cover only a fraction of the rebuilding costs. The church had only recently completed a renovation of its roof and walls that cost around $4.5 million, Ms. Nikolic said. Rebuilding will take years, she said, and until it is complete, the congregation has been invited to meet at St. George’s Episcopal Church on East 16th Street, which is a part of the same parish as Calvary Church.
St. George’s has also burned; the building was completely gutted in 1865 and rebuilt over two years.
Candles are one possible culprit, but investigators still do not know the cause behind the tragic fire. The New York Daily news has published photos of the first service held since the fire.
Photo of St. George’s Episcopal Church on 16th Street by <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dmadeo” title=”User:Dmadeo”>Dmadeo</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”en”>Own work</span>, <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0″ title=”Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0″>CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2787117