“They were people who you had prayed with.” A congregation and its priest, their faith tested, focus on healing and remembering their lost parishioners.
MIAMI BEACH — The Rev. Juan J. Sosa was on his early-morning walk not far from the beach when he heard the wail of sirens. He assumed there had been a traffic accident. But when he walked toward what had been a familiar landmark on his route, he saw only a great void, a gutted tower and a pile of mangled steel and concrete.
A terrifying reality set in. The Champlain Towers South, just blocks from the parish Father Sosa has overseen for almost 11 years, was home to a number of his parishioners. The Guaras, whose oldest daughter he had helped with the sacrament of first communion; the Moras, whom he had dined with in their high-rise condo; the Velasquez and Torres families.
As Americans awoke to news of one of the deadliest structural collapses in the nation’s history, Father Sosa rushed back to the church to check registration records. He and the parish’s secretary began calling those they knew inside the building. No one answered.
Nearly four weeks after the collapse claimed the lives of 97 people, the immensity of the loss has settled into Surfside, Fla., a beachfront community home to a mix of retirees and young professionals. As the horror has unfolded, the church’s deep connections to the disaster have been fully revealed.
Just three blocks away, in neighboring Miami Beach, St. Joseph Catholic Church is the closest church to the beachside tower — which was once visible from its parking lot. Condo residents routinely walked to Mass. When rescue workers frantically scoured the wreckage for signs of life, heartbroken parishioners and strangers alike streamed into the sanctuary to pray and reflect and hold tight to hope that their loved ones had somehow survived.
But the closest tie was the St. Joseph’s congregation itself: Eight families who were members of the parish were killed, spanning three generations and about 20 lives, from a 4-year-old who had been baptized at the church to a 92-year-old matriarch who was remembered as the “heart and soul” of her family.
Nothing could have prepared Father Sosa or the parishioners for a tragedy of this scale.
“Like so many others, I have moved through different feelings, from shock to grief,” Father Sosa, 74, said. “And now, I want to help the community remember our families and help them feel some kind of closure.”
The reminders of loss are everywhere. Emergency workers chip away at the dust-coated ruins. Trucks carry loads of concrete and steel intermingled with personal items. Notes and flowers and photos of victims, their smiles frozen in time, adorn the makeshift memorial fence near the site. A row of blue wooden hearts with the names of the dead form a row in front of the memorial. Day after day, people come to pay their respects.
Photographs of the Guaras, one of St. Joseph’s 1,300 parish families, were left near a church entrance when they were still missing. Inside, near the altar, is a binder where people wrote the names of missing family and friends — filling four full pages. Father Sosa recently read the names aloud during Mass, a small gesture that underscored their shared mourning.
“There were just so many families that had a connection to our church,” said Hope Sadowski, 74, a longtime member who had four friends killed in the collapse. “These were people that you saw at Mass and who you chatted with. They were people who you had prayed with.”
Days before the June 24 collapse, Ms. Sadowski and Ana Mora had done precisely that. The two mothers, whose friendship was born in the church, embraced after a Saturday Mass. Ms. Mora told Ms. Sadowski that she would continue to pray for Ms. Sadowski’s grandson, who has pediatric cancer.
“It was the last time I saw her,” Ms. Sadowski, an administrative assistant at the Archdiocese of Miami’s Office of Catholic Schools, said tearfully. “It has been such a difficult time for our church and our community. But out of this tragedy, something good has happened. And that has been we have come together, regardless of skin color or religion or politics, to grieve together.”
Over the past month, Father Sosa has helped guide his parishioners through the crisis, from counseling those with missing relatives to leading funeral Masses. The church, too, was transformed in those early weeks into a community center of sorts, with both rescue workers and media representatives using the parking lot.
“I saw my role as being a bridge, connecting our community in the middle of an emergency,” said Father Sosa, who was born in Cuba and pastored at two other parishes before arriving at St. Joseph’s. “We saw a kind of unity that I hope we can hold on to.”
In all, 12 families who had lived in the building — about 25 people — were registered at the parish. But it turned out that two families had sold their units. And Cesar and Carla Guerrero, who lived on the fifth floor, were not in the building at the time of the collapse. One floor up, Alfredo and Marian Lopez, plus their son, Michael, were able to escape, leaving eight families among the dead.
On that first Sunday, Father Sosa led his usual morning Mass — but with many empty pews. “When our father read out their names, it broke my heart,” Nury Lopez, 51, a parishioner of two decades, said of the list. “These people were here last Sunday.”
Frequently Asked Questions
It could take months for investigators to determine precisely why a significant portion of the Surfside, Fla., building collapsed. But there are already some clues about potential reasons for the disaster, including design or construction flaws. Three years before the collapse, a consultant found evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage. Engineers who have visited the wreckage or viewed photos of it say that damaged columns at the building’s base may have less steel reinforcement than was originally planned.
Condo boards and homeowners’ associations often struggle to convince residents to pay for needed repairs, and most of Champlain Towers South’s board members resigned in 2019 because of their frustrations. In April, the new board chair wrote to residents that conditions in the building had “gotten significantly worse” in the past several years and that the construction would now cost $15 million instead of $9 million. There had also been complaints from residents that the construction of a massive, Renzo Piano-designed residential tower next door was shaking Champlain Towers South.
Even though Florida’s high-rise building regulations have long been among the strictest in the nation so they could stand up to hurricane winds, flooding and rain, along with the corrosive effects of salty air, evidence has mounted that those rules have been enforced unevenly by local governments. Engineers are conducting a thorough review of Champlain Towers North, a nearly identical building, to determine whether it could also be vulnerable. In nearby North Miami Beach, residents of the Crestview Towers were swiftly evacuated after a report documented cracks and corrosion in the building’s structure. And Bal Harbour 101 is spending an estimated $4.5 million in repairs. Now, residents throughout the region who long glamorized oceanfront condos are debating whether they should put their homes on the market.
Entire family units died because the collapse happened in the middle of the night, when people were sleeping. The parents and children killed in Unit 802, for example, were Marcus Joseph Guara, 52, a fan of the rock band Kiss and the University of Miami Hurricanes; Anaely Rodriguez, 42, who embraced tango and salsa dancing; Lucia Guara, 11, who found astronomy and outer space fascinating; and Emma Guara, 4, who loved the world of princesses. A floor-by-floor look at the victims shows the extent of the devastation.
A 15-year-old boy and his mother were rescued from the rubble shortly after the building fell. She died in a hospital, however, and no more survivors were found during two weeks of a search-and-rescue mission. There had been hope that demolishing the remaining structure would allow rescuers to safely explore voids where someone could possibly have survived. But only bodies were found. There were 97 confirmed victims through July 14.
Father Sosa, too, struggled to process the dozens of deaths. A few days later, in an essay he titled “A Pastor’s Dilemma,” he posed this question: How do you deal with a group of the faithful who reside at a building that collapses unexpectedly in the middle of the night?
The answer, he wrote at the time, emerged from the tragedy: “You must be present and available, hopeful that God will restore what is broken and will bring peace to those who wait for news of their relatives and friends.”
Not since he was a young priest, when he led a funeral Mass for an older couple who died within 24 hours of each other, had Father Sosa faced so much familial — and congregational — grief.
But two weeks ago, three caskets stood before him, holding the bodies of Marcus Guara, his wife, Anaely Rodriguez, and their small daughters, Lucia and Emma, who were buried together in a single white coffin. Hours before, he was part of the funeral Mass at another nearby church for another collapse victim and St. Joseph’s parishioner, Hilda Noriega.
At those funerals, Father Sosa prayed for and affirmed the strength of family bonds. He has offered comforting words and has asked the loved ones left behind, those unmoored by a collective and compounded anguish, to try to find God within the depths of their devastation. Despite unfathomable loss and darkness, he has told them, they must see light, they must forge ahead.
That next chapter, he said, is healing and remembrance. St. Joseph’s plans to honor the parish families who were killed with a church memorial. And as the weeks eventually give way to months, mending the hearts of parishioners, he said, will require leaning into their faith, listening to one another and “pointing to the goodness in what others who now live have done for those who died.”
Giulia Heyward contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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