Fundraiser Highlights Plight of Red Hook's Visitation Church

Photo Courtesy Brooklyn Catholic

Red Hook-based Cora Dance troupe will perform Prey, a dance concert, at 7 PM on August 18, as a fundraiser for the 137-year-old Visitation of the Blessed Mary Church, at the southwest corner of Richards and Verona Streets in Red Hook.

The performance is set in the Parish Hall, at 98 Richards Street, but will incorporate the church and its environs.

Cora Dance will donate half of the proceeds of the concert to the church, to help it pay off its 26,000 debt; to make desperately needed repairs; and to renovate the church basement, the stained-glass window and the theater.

Shannon Hummel, director of Cora Dance, said the troupe hoped to make the church more visible, so it can attract the sponsorship it needs in order to preserve its unique spiritual, cultural and historical legacy.
 
Sister Frauka, a spokesperson for the church, envisions its dank, rubble-strewn, handicapped-unfriendly basement getting a $1.4 million makeover -- including an elevator, a second bathroom and a kitchen -- that would turn it into a conference center. 

The Park Slope chapter of Koinonia John the Baptist Church, which manages Visitation, is paying down the church's debt and working to bring in new revenues to pay the priest, who now collects no salary.

The Brooklyn Diocese may have refused to loan money to the Visitation Parish, but the response from the community has given the congregation, on the verge of losing hope, a reason to believe that maybe there's a way to save the church.

For more information about Cora Dance's performance of Prey at Visitation on August 18, call  718-858-2520.

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