St. Peter Church is a Roman Catholic church at 695 Colorado Avenue in Bridgeport. The church, designed by Anthony J. DePace, was built in 1940. In 1991, St. Anthony Church, also located on Colorado Avenue, merged with St. Peter’s.
St. Peter Church, Bridgeport (1940)
I attended this church as a child and teen. I served as summer sacristan when the sisters were away. I laundered the linens and set up for weekend and holy day Masses during that period. The Sisters of St. Joseph had their convent diagionally across the street from the church and had their own chapel there, where the parish priests sometimes said Mass for the sisters. I remember boiling the altar linens in starch water, on my mom’s stove. I starched the corporal, nut NEVER the purificators. The water from the initial washing of the putificators went down the drain of a special sink that drained directly into the ground, not a septic system, because remnants of Christ’s body and blood were still on the cloth.
During summer months when the sisters were away, I was given the opportunity to care for the altar linens . I rinsed them first in the sacrariu that drained directly into the ground, then I washed the linens, boiled them in starch water and ironed them by hand.