Holy Land USA Deal Promises New Life for Abandoned Catholic Shrine

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Ann Marie Somma

CONNECTICUT---Holy Land USA once awed the curious and the faithful. Lately it endured vandalism, wrestled (and lost) a battle with nature and faded from memory. Now the abandoned Bible-themed shrine from the 1950s may find new life. The park closed in 1984, two years before the death of its founder, John Baptist Greco, a devout Roman Catholic. He left the property to the order of nuns who watched it crumble from their convent window on the site, eschewing several attempts to restore the park. Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary and local car dealer Fritz Blasius bought the 17-acre ruin from the Morristown, N.J-based Pontifical Institute for the Religious Teachers Fillippini. O’Leary told The Waterbury Observer that he and Blasius will form a nonprofit to raise the $350,000 to turn the property into a Christian shrine where the city’s ethnic groups can display their faith. [link]