St. Patrick's Church
| St. Patrick's Church
Gulsonside [76, 73]
Basic Info:
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Current Status
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St. Patrick's Church |
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Revive Point |
| This area is a designated Revivification Point |
This revive point is operated by the RKKA.
Description
This grey stone edifice would more properly be called St. Patrick's Abbey Church, as it is only the most well-known building run by the small community of Cistercian monks living along Huttenbach Drive. The present buildings - church, cloister, dormitory, and other small structures - were built in 1894 after a fire destroyed much of the monastery in January of that year. St. Patrick's Abbey and its cemetery occupy quite a large area of prime real estate near Blesley Mall, though it is widely speculated that the monastery would not have survived if not for its centuries-old charter guaranteeing the land to the monks and the tenacity of then-Abbott Augustine. Though the brothers survived for centuries as a rather open cloister - allowing the townspeople to come and go largely as they pleased - but with the decay of the western and southern parts of Gulsonside, the monks found it necessary to commission a stone fence in the 1980's. The fence succeeded in its two main goals: remaining true to the abbey's architecture and keeping vandals off the Church's land.
History
Saint Patrick's stands upon the site of an ancient monastery dating back to the 7th century. Though this original cloister no longer stands, historians have noted that the persistence of the monastic community - uninterrupted since the abbey's founding - is most remarkable. The abbey church has also offered services almost as regularly since the village of Gulson's Grove began to grow up around the monastery many centuries ago. While the buildings have not survived the ravages of time and occasional persecution, the Cistercian brothers' community has; most recently defending its land when the developers of Blesley Mall put considerable pressure on the Church to abandon the faltering abbey. Abbott Augustine, spiritual father of the abbey until a few months before the zombie outbreak, stood fast against the developer's demands and refused to de-sanctify the hallowed ground of church or cemetery. His tenacity revitalized the monastery and drew new monks into life at St. Patrick's, ensuring that the abbey would remain strong and steadfast to the present day.
Barricade Policy
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In accordance with the policies of RESCUE and the RKKA, St. Patrick's should be maintained as completely un-barricaded and open unless an especially high concentration of hostile forces are in the area. All are welcome to enter the church for a revive, though the brothers do sometimes deem certain zombies - and the occasional survivor - unfit for admittance onto their holy ground.
In such cases, the brothers set themselves to the task of forcibly removing the unwanted persons from their cloister, having made peace with the necessity of violence in the present crisis. However, many of the brothers have found this to run counter to the spirit of their monastic vows, preferring to rely on local security forces and militias for any needed muscle.
