Regina restoration aims to reinvigorate faith

When spring approaches next year, two 36-foot spires that have soared as landmarks of Regina’s skyline for more than a century will come down as the boldest step yet in a multi-year, multi-million-dollar restoration of Holy Rosary Cathedral.

Construction crews are scheduled to mobilize on the site of the mother church of the Archdiocese of Regina in February, with plans for a careful removal of the towering spires expected to begin at the end of the month and into early March. 

New spires will then be constructed in the cathedral’s parking lot, complete with structural steel, scaffolding and metalwork, before being lifted back into place later that fall. Standing atop the cathedral’s trademark 110-foot towers, the completed structures will once again bring the church to its prominent place on the skyline as it returns to its full height of 146 feet.

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The daring procedure will officially mark a continuation into the next phase of the archdiocese’s Rebuilding Our Church Capital Campaign. Launched in the fall of 2019, the project has been making extensive repairs and restorations under a $17-million price tag, with $11 million slated for cathedral restoration and an additional $6 million for a new pastoral centre on adjacent grounds. 

The campaign traces back to the arrival of Archbishop Don Bolen in 2016, when he was encouraged to address long-deferred maintenance on Holy Rosary Cathedral. Bolen would commission a comprehensive building condition assessment that was completed in 2018, making clear the scale of what was needed to ensure the features of the then 101-year-old structure. 

While the pandemic and other challenges slowed progress and forced the project into carefully managed phases, the underlying reality remained the same — waiting any longer risked critical system failure and various structural elements reaching a point of no return.

“While the task is daunting, if you don't do it, its fate becomes inevitable, and it has to be sacrificed. That's what happened to the other Holy Rosary,” said John Dipple, co-chair of the campaign, speaking about Holy Rosary Community School, which was demolished last year following a 111-year lifespan. 

“With the cathedral, we simply don’t have that option. You just have to do what you have to do because this is a working church. With 1,000 people coming through here every Sunday, if the boiler goes out in January when it's 35 degrees below, you have a real problem."  

Dipple also chairs the steering committee overseeing the physical work. In 2024, roughly $2.6 million raised through donations allowed for work on structural repairs, a new accessible elevator and accessible washrooms to be finished. 

The process has been relatively seamless and well received so far, with Lisa Polk, the archdiocese’s director of pastoral services and operations, expressing the relief amongst the parish community to see the project continue on. 

“The accessibility piece has been huge. One of our priests is in a wheelchair, and he had not been able to have much access to the seat of our community. Now, close to 80 or 90 per cent of the cathedral is available to him,” she said.  

Still, the next phases of the cathedral’s restoration pose some significant challenges, logistically and financially. 

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“ We have received $8.5 million so far, with another $8.5- to $10-million worth of work to do outstanding. The shortfall for our current phase is still about $4 million. Physically, the taking down and the putting up of the spires will be something of a generational event because it will be so visible, which adds some stress and anxiety,” Dipple said. 

“In phase one, we had to tear down part of a staircase, and so to watch a backhoe reach up 25 feet in the air and use its claw to pull this away from the church, you're just hoping that the contractor has got a plan that it will fall away from the rest of the cathedral and not back on it.” 

The co-chair and fellow members of the campaign team, however, are confident the Catholic community will respond with generosity and prayer. 

“ I keep reminding myself that we are the Church and that we can leave space for the Holy Spirit to help solve what sometimes seems to be intractable problems. We've been fundraising since 2019, so while I don't want to sound as if this is easy, we got this. It's hard work, but we rely on the generosity of many people,” Dipple said. 

As both Polk and Dipple highlighted, Holy Rosary Cathedral and its ongoing restoration are a project far greater than repairing a mere building. Its significance as a landmark to Regina as a whole, Catholic and secular alike, is something deeply understood by locals. 

Holy Rosary sits in Regina’s compact downtown and lends its name to the a largely residential area known as the Cathedral neighbourhood. Originally built in an open, bald prairie, the ambition of building such a grand structure, even in 1913, was audacious.

Local Catholics know the parish for serving its very diverse community in what has always been, in effect, an immigrant church. Historically, it housed Polish, German and later Italian Catholics predominantly, and it continues to serve the full diversity of the city today. Still the seat of the Archbishop and the central gathering place for a vast geographic area in southern Saskatchewan, it is a gathering place for major celebrations.

As Polk explains, Regina might best be recognized for two things: the spire-laden skyline and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. 

“(This project) is about how we can continue to share the faith in a place where a building is a real visible sense of faith. We'll go to different parts of the city and people will talk about how they can see the spires from all over, even from Mosaic Stadium watching the Roughriders play,” she said. 

Following phase 2, the campaign will look to complete a full renewal of various building systems, such as heating, plumbing, electrical and sewer lines from entry to exit, with the overall project aiming toward completion some time in 2027.

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Before that day, the local community will first collectively hold its breath as Holy Rosary’s spires, which have stood above more than a century of development and change throughout the capital city, come down to leave the Regina skyline without one of its markers. Then, God-willing, brand new spires will go back up. As they’re raised, she hopes a new, restored and long-lasting sense of community will be as well. 

“With the restoration of the building, I hope for a restoration or a renewal within the people, that they might be invigorated as well,” she said. 

A version of this article appeared in the September 06, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "Regina restoration aims to reinvigorate faith"