BREEZY POINT — When parishioners returned to St. Edmund the Martyr Church after last year’s devastating fire, one familiar face was still missing: the Blessed Mother in the stained-glass window above the front entrance.
Now, more than a year later, that image has been restored, completing a stained-glass rebuilding project led by Patrick Clark, owner of Sunlites Stained Glass in Rockaway Beach.
Clark, hired by the church to rebuild the window and others destroyed by the fire, said the Blessed Mother window was the final piece of restoration work. His shop also restored five other stained-glass windows that were destroyed.
Father Michael Gelfant, pastor of Blessed Trinity Parish, which includes three churches — St. Thomas More, St. Genevieve, and St. Edmund the Martyr — said the Blessed Mother window is especially important to his parishioners.
“That window meant a lot to the ladies in the Rosary Society and to people,” he said, “because as you were walking into the church or walking out, that is what you saw.”
The three-alarm fire on April 19, 2025 — Holy Saturday — caused severe damage to the building’s interior and resulted in the church closing for more than a year. After a major repair project, the church reopened with Bishop Robert Brennan presiding over a rededication Mass on May 29.
“We’re going to do a little more fundraising, but we were able to get this church open in 13 months,” he said, crediting the parishioners for their dedication to reopening the church. “No one can do that in New York City.”
According to Clark, the fire destroyed half of the church’s stained-glass windows. In his restoration work, Clark said he looked to faithfully recreate them.
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“The stained-glass windows are sort of like a country church. They’re simple, big diamond lights with painted memorials and medallions with symbols,” Clark said, noting that restoring them was a “sort of spiritual experience.”
He added that the windows at St. Edmund are traditional stained glass, made with lead and cut by hand using methods that date back centuries to the era of the great cathedrals.
“We are participating in an ancient rite of artistic creativity as it’s been done all these years,” he explained.
Father Gelfant hired Clark’s firm for the job because he was familiar with the artist’s earlier work. Clark restored St. Finbar Church in Bath Beach when Father Gelfant was the pastor there several years ago.
“Clark is a local legend, certainly through his artistic work,” he said. “But with stained glass windows, it’s great to have someone — an artist, a studio — that’s able to produce stained glass windows locally.”
Clark, who lives in Far Rockaway and is a parishioner of St. Francis de Sales Church in Belle Harbor, said the window restoration project is a welcome opportunity to work on something close to home.
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“It’s very exciting to work on St. Edmund’s because this is our brother parish,” he said. “I’ve been doing stained glass in the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Archdiocese (of New York) for 40 years, and 95% of my work is not in Far Rockaway.
“To be able to do something in my own home area, in my own diocese, and in my own neighborhood is the best.”