Grace Episcopal Church in Riverhead reopens after renovations as Iglesia Episcopal San Francisco

The boarded-up, historic 150-year-old church in Riverhead that served Latino immigrants, including East End farmworkers, was in such bad shape a few years ago that the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island feared it might have to be demolished.

But on Sunday, the former Grace Episcopal Church was reopened with a new name and a renewed mission to help some of the poorest of the poor of the region’s growing Latino population.

The church, now called Iglesia Episcopal San Francisco, or Episcopal Church of St. Francis, opened its doors again after a three-year renovation that cost $500,000. The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island also has brought in a missionary priest from Colombia to minister full time to the congregation, who hail mainly from Mexico and Colombia.

“The idea that it is being focused on ministry to day workers, farmworkers, vineyard workers in this community is the answer to a dream for our diocese,” Bishop Lawrence C. Provenzano, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, told Newsday on Sunday. “I am overjoyed.”

At a ceremony outside the church late Sunday afternoon, the new priest, the Rev. Luis Lopez, told parishioners and other supporters that “today is a historic day for our community. Today starts a new chapter.”

Then Provenzano took his crosier and knocked three times on the closed front door. A parishioner inside opened it, and the crowd entered.

Lopez arrived from Colombia last year with his family and has been ministering to the community as best as he can without use of the church building. For months the parish was celebrating Mass in a local elementary school.

“I’m very excited,” Lopez told Newsday in Spanish. “With the broad support that the Episcopal Diocese can provide on the East End, we can offer invaluable help to the immigrants.”

The parish has a partnership with the nonprofit Rural & Migrant Ministry, which will operate out of the church’s basement, Lopez said. The group offers everything from English and Spanish classes to women’s empowerment programs to assistance getting fair wages for workers.

During the shutdown, the group sometimes put up vinyl tents in the parking lot so some programs could go on, Newsday previously reported.

Grace Episcopal Church, founded in 1871, shut down in 2017 because of declining membership. Rural & Migrant Ministry started using the building that same year. By 2020, the Episcopal Diocese also started using it for religious services for the Latino population. But by 2023, it was closed and boarded up because of deteriorating conditions, Provenzano has said.

“It looked horrible,” he said. “It looked like the death of a parish.”

The diocese was considering knocking it down because initially it appeared renovations would cost millions. But the diocese found a way to do so for far less, in part through a contractor who offered reduced rates.

Anel Barreto, a native of Mexico who joined the parish seven years ago, said parishioners have tried to persevere, but it wasn’t the same celebrating Mass in a school cafeteria.

The reopening “is something we have been anxiously awaiting,” she told Newsday in Spanish. “The community is very happy they are going to open the doors again.”