By Gretchen Keiser

The rectory of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Blairsville was gutted by fire Friday morning, April 27, after the building was apparently struck by lightning.

Glenmary pastor Father Bob Poandl said virtually every material thing in the house was lost, but no one was seriously injured in the fire which broke out rapidly at about 8 a.m. Tom Sheehy, a candidate for the Glenmary order who is working in the parish, was the only one at home, Father Bob said, and wasn’t even aware that the house had been hit by lightning. Within a few minutes, he saw smoke and left the house to check from the outside for the source. He came back inside, but rapidly had to grope his way through thick black smoke to escape the building. When he was outside, the house burst into flames.

“The best we can figure is that it must have hit the awning over the carport and gone through the electrical system” of the house, Father Bob said. The refrigerator door and others appliances melted and the wires were stripped.

Providentially, Sheehy was the only one in the house, which is adjacent to St. Francis church and was purchased two years ago when Father Bob moved from Dahlonega to Blairsville. The two other residents of the house, Father Bob, and Scott Schaefer, a seminary candidate from Trenton, N.J., were both out of town and had both been delayed on their return so they did not arrive in the middle of the night as planned.

Father Bob had given a day of recollection out of town and was intending to drive through the night, which would have brought him back to Blairsville and bed at about 5 or 6 a.m. Instead, he opted to stay in a motel on the road “for the first time in eight years.” Schaefer got last minute tickets for an event while out of town and stayed an extra day.

Now all three are “camping out” in a room at the back of the church so that they can still be where they are needed to serve the parish. A special Mass was celebrated Friday night at the church and needed items quickly began to turn up. The two young men lost their breviaries in the fire and some of Father Bob’s vestments were burned, as were treasured photographs. But the parish records and his books were kept in an office elsewhere and were not harmed.

Despite the greatness of the loss, Father Bob said that he was confident that God would provide through the parish and the immediate community all their material needs. “All I need is prayers,” he said, “that it brings us all closer together and that it would work for the honor and glory of God.”

They will be cooking in the church kitchen and a trailer is being brought behind the church, he said, so that they will have shower facilities while the insurance on the rectory is received and rebuilding can begin. Meanwhile, the parishioners who were so concerned for their pastor that they had set up watches along the road for his return Friday, were busy putting up drapes in the back room for the church’s new occupants.