Outdoor Altar in St. Joseph’s Field

The Outdoor Altar in St. Joseph’s Field was erected for an open-air service amid the growing crowds drawn by the reported cures at St. Joseph’s Church and the expectation that Alice Pagett might appear again. Built around a tree the organizers were expressly told to preserve, its raised platform made the service visible to a vast congregation and placed the oak behind the altar at the center of the gathering. The structure served practical needs, but it also turned the field into a stage on which religious expectation, public spectacle, and organized pilgrimage converged.

Construction and Setting

The altar was planned when Monsignor Delgard explained that the Sunday service would take place in the field adjacent to St. Joseph’s Church rather than inside the building. Seating would be arranged around a central altar, though many visitors would have to stand on the muddy ground. The preparations acknowledged the scale of the expected attendance even as church representatives urged the public not to travel to Banfield.

The contractor asked whether the tree should be cut down. Monsignor Delgard told him not to destroy anything in the field and instructed him to build the platform around it. That decision shaped the altar’s setting: the structure did not replace the oak or clear the field into an undifferentiated space. Instead, the tree remained immediately behind the platform, a conspicuous natural feature incorporated into the arrangement for worship.

By the time the congregation assembled, the platform stood five feet above the ground. Its height allowed people across the field to witness the ceremony, while benches were arranged close to the centerpiece and farther out across the gathering space. The altar’s design therefore answered a logistical problem created by the crowd: a service intended for a church interior had become a public event requiring visibility, seating, and room for people arriving from beyond the village.

The Altar as a Gathering Point

The field filled well before the scheduled mass. People pressed through a newly constructed entrance and sought seats near the altar, some hoping to see Alice and others wanting to be near what they regarded as her holiness. The crowd included curious visitors, pilgrims, clergy, religious associations, and people with illnesses or disabilities. Wheelchairs had difficulty crossing the churned, soft ground, and a clear central area was left for stretchers and wheelchairs, with ambulance personnel, nurses, and relatives nearby.

The arrangement made the altar the congregation’s shared point of attention while exposing the limits of the improvised venue. The raised platform improved sightlines, but the muddy field remained difficult to cross, and the organizers were already considering how invalids might be accommodated at future gatherings. Around the platform, clergy, nuns, and laypeople occupied reserved benches; press representatives gathered near the front, while television cameras watched from cranes beyond the hedge. The altar was thus at once a place of worship, the practical center of crowd management, and the focus of media attention.

The Service and Alice’s Appearance

Monsignor Delgard began the service facing thousands of expectant people. His concern for the sick among them was sharpened by his fear that their hopes would end in disappointment. He doubted that the earlier events could be repeated and questioned whether the Church should take part in what he regarded as a delusion. Yet the altar put him before the crowd as its presiding priest, with Bishop Caines and George Southworth among those present and Alice watching from the congregation.

When Alice approached the platform and stood before the oak, the altar and tree formed the immediate setting for the reported levitation. Monsignor Delgard had to steady himself at the lectern as Alice seemed to draw vitality from him; the crowd watched as she rose into the air. The narrative places the extraordinary event at the altar’s edge, with the preserved tree looming behind it. The platform did not itself cause the event, but its position made it the architectural frame through which the congregation encountered it.

From Field Service to Pilgrimage Stage

The altar’s use extended beyond the Sunday service. At a later candlelight procession, the field was described as the Field of the Holy Virgin and as an open-air temple. Thousands joined the march, including Banfield residents and visitors who had travelled from farther away. The bishop led the procession, followed by priests, nuns, and Alice. In this later public presentation, the altar and the tree remained part of the setting through which the gathering’s religious meaning was communicated, including in a broadcast whose account described the field as a place of shared faith.

The field’s devotional use also unfolded beside the material signs of a pilgrimage economy. Stalls displayed religious trinkets and images, including hastily adapted objects presenting Alice as a devotional figure. Gerry Fenn and Nancy Shelbeck encountered souvenirs that turned the field, its soil, and its reported visions into things visitors could purchase. These goods were not part of the altar itself, but their presence around the gathering showed how quickly the site’s religious significance became entangled with tourism and commerce.

The altar’s significance lies in this combination of functions. It was a purpose-built platform for a service that had outgrown the church, a focal point for people seeking worship or a glimpse of Alice, and the setting for a pivotal reported miracle. Built around rather than in place of the oak, it joined formal religious organization to the charged landscape of the field. As the gatherings expanded, that arrangement helped make the site legible as a public pilgrimage destination, while leaving unresolved the tension between sacred expectation, crowd management, spectacle, and commercial interest.