Chapel of the Holy Innocents

“The general purpose of the Fernald State School is concern for the the dignity of human life, expressed through the total care and nurture of the retarded person, as an individual child of God.”

“The specific purpose of my department is to provide for the religious needs of the individual pupil”.

This was the mission statement of the Fernald State School. This mission prompted the founding of the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in 1960. Named for the emerging idea that disabled children were gifts from God, rather than punishments, the chapel housed Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish services from its opening until its closing in 2014. The chapel’s main room is long and narrow, with an altar and now-broken crucifix at the farthest point from the door. Its organ and choir balcony are still intact, and there is ample space in front of the pews for children in wheelchairs and stretchers. The stained-glass windows display beautiful and colorful religious imagery. The chapel was one of the last buildings on the campus to close, shutting its doors in 2014. The buildings still retain a certain lustre of times gone by. One former school volunteer recalls services there as “rocking, and... loud, and... totally off key, but with all the love and adoration that God wants." For students and volunteers alike, church services were a way for the Fernald school to treat them more like humans.

The name of the church was recommended by the Archbishop because most of the residents at the Fernald school had been there since infancy, and did not know harm or evil, therefore they were innocents. In addition, attitudes towards the disabled were shifting from thinking these children were punishments for their parents, to thinking they were blessings from God

The church was the fifth of its kind to be built during the two years that preceded. The building of the church cost about $250,000, or $2,011,267 in today’s dollars. Additionally, there were plans to build a second chapel, but it was never built.

Around the mid to late 1960s there was an attempt to build a second chapel. It would be called St. Luke’s and be Protestant only. They had a board of directors, and were meeting regularly at Fernald in order to discuss matters such as the structure, the name (some board members thought it sounded too Roman Catholic and should be changed), arrangement, finances, committees, programs (interfaith program and more), advertising (their brochures), enlistment, foundation and donors, and potential conflicts with the law.

The following is the text of a plaque on the wall of the chapel.

Beatitudes for the Friends of the Handicapped

Blessed Are You who take time to listen to

difficult speech, for you help us to know that

if we persevere we can be understood.

Blessed Are You who walk with us in public...

and ignore stares of strangers, for in your

companionship we find havens of relaxations.

Blessed Are You who never bid us to

“hurry up” and more blessed, you who do not

snatch our tasks from our hands to do them

for us, for often we need time rather than help.

Blessed Are You who stand beside us as

we enter new and untried ventures, for our

failures will be outweighed by the times when

we surprise ourselves and you.

Blessed Are You who ask for our help,

for our greatest need is to be needed.

Blessed Are you who help us with the

gracefulness of Christ, Who did not bruise

the reed and quench the flax, for often we

need that help we cannot ask for.

Blessed Are You when by all these

things you assure us that the thing that

makes us individuals is not our peculiar

muscles, nor in our wounded nervous

systems, but in God-given self which no

infirmity can confine.

Rejoice And Be Exceedingly Glad.

Know that you give reassurance that could

never be spoken in words, for you deal with

us as Christ dealt with the slow, the peculiar.

Blessed Are You! Indeed!

(1)"Chapel of the Holy Innocents." March 12, 1960. (Newspaper)

(2) St. Luke Chapel Commission. St. Luke's Fernald School Chapel Association Board Meeting Minutes June 27 1967. Compiled by Molly Buredeau. June 27, 1967. Meeting minutes, Fernald School, Waltham.

(3) https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxHIf1i1dAsV0txRFFDZzZlTDA/view?usp=sharing