Our Lady of Peace

Beside a Santa Clara church stands a stainless-steel Virgin Mary that the church says is higher than most three-storey buildings. Our Lady of Peace Shrine and Church says the statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is 32 feet high, weighs 7,200 pounds and rests on a 12-foot landscaped mound.

According to the church, its pastor, Msgr. John Sweeny, commissioned the statue in August 1980 from sculptor Charles C. Parks of Wilmington, Delaware, after a long-held wish to honour the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The head, hands and feet are cast in stainless steel and the gown is built from welded strips of the same metal. The church says it was finished in summer 1982 and first erected outdoors on the lawn of the sculptor's studio. Visitors came in such numbers that the mayor of Wilmington invited the sculptor to display it in the city, where, the church says, it stood from 1 September to 10 October 1982 and drew busloads of pilgrims. A local newspaper supplement about it, titled "The Madonna In Rodney Square", is said by the church to have sold its first 10,000 copies in a day.