Portugal Cove-St. Philip's church mediation attempt fails

Portugal Cove-St. Philip's town council will vote at its next public meeting on a staff recommendation to grant a permit to demolish an 120-year-old Anglican church.

The town recently offered to bring the two sides of a long-running dispute over the church's future together to discuss their differences with the help of mediation.

The town has since received a formal response from the office of the Anglican diocese in St. John's saying no to mediation.

The request for the permit comes from the local Anglican parish which owns the church and has no more use for it. 

The Church By The Sea, a group of local residents, has been putting up a long fight to save the building.

The showdown between the two sides has lasted for more than five years, divided the community and left the church vandalized with its steeple cut down by unnamed hands.

Church By The Sea member Winston Fiander had welcomed the idea of mediation earlier this week.

Rev. Ed Keeping, rector of the St. Philip's Anglican parish, dismissed it, saying that "things have gone too far."

Church belongs to community: Historic Trust

In a letter written April 9, Newfoundland and Labrador Historic Trust president Peter Jackson warned of a repeat of the recent and controversial demolition of Quinniapiac, an historic property on Winter Street in St. John's.

"This church does not just belong to the congregation, it belongs to the community that exists today and the community that preceded it," he argued in an open letter in which he makes a case for preserving and restoring the church.

Keeping has made it clear in the past that he sees the campaign to save the church as meddling by outsiders in the parish's right to decide over its own property.

According to him, the demolition of the old church was one of the conditions for building and financing the parish's new church.