Photo by Bill Green The official dedication of St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church was held Sunday afternoon. The church was destroyed by a fire in June of 2004 accidentally caused by roofers working on the steeple.

"Four years ago we gathered here with tears of sorrow," Monsignor John Dietzenbach of St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church reminded almost 1,000 parishioners Sunday afternoon. "Today, we gather with tears of joy."

In June 2004, the church was under renovation when repair equipment overheated, causing a fire that engulfed St. Peter's landmark steeple. The flames spread across the tarp-covered roof, destroying the church, which was built in 1871.

The Most Rev. Edwin F. O'Brien, archbishop of Baltimore, formally dedicated a new, substantially larger St. Peter's on Sunday, with a consecration and Mass attended by his predecessor, Cardinal William H. Keeler, and more than 40 priests and deacons from the area.

Brian Murray of Walkersville , a former St. Peter's altar boy, played the bagpipes to welcome the crowd that came to watch Mike Riley, parish council president, and Chuck O'Connor, chairman of the parish council's planning committee, hand the keys to O'Brien, who officially opened the church doors.

As the church bells rang out, Janice Murray, Brian's mother and a St. Peter's employee for 11 years, recalled the day of the fire.

"This is very much a generational church," she said, adding that all her children were confirmed at St. Peters. "The day the church burned everyone was out here crying."

She also recalled the logistical difficulties of the aftermath.

"It was very trying then to find room for everybody with all the activities that go on everyday. But this is just the most wonderful community and when you need people to pull together they do."

St. Peter's council member Ginny Abel of New Market said Sunday's ceremony was very exciting, "the fulfillment of a lot of work."

For the past four years, to accommodate the 1,800 registered parish families and others, St. Peter's has held a Saturday night service and six Sunday masses at Sullivan Hall, the church's multi-purpose center across the street, Abel said.

"Every Saturday the men and boys set up all the chairs and they take them back down again every Sunday night. Up and down and up and down."

In the larger church, St. Peter's will continue one Saturday service and cut the number of Sunday masses in half.

"The church is more than just the building -- it's the people," Abel said. "We were still together, but this is an opportunity for us to welcome new people, as well as an opportunity for us just to worship together."

The congregation was saddened by the loss of its historic 325-seat church, O'Connor said, but in 2004 an effort was already under way to expand.

"We knew the space we had was too small. This church today will seat over 800 and ultimately we'll be able to grow to over 1,000 seats."

Connor said the cost of the project ran to $12 million, with $3.5 million coming from fire insurance, $4 million from the St. Peter's community fundraising efforts and the remainder from a mortgage loan.

It initially wasn't clear if the land was sufficient for a larger church, Connor said. The parish's permanent deacon, 91-year-old Mike Misulia, a retired surveyor, was the first to discover that a bigger building could fit on the site, which is squeezed by its cemetery to the north and east, and Md. 75 to the west.

The facade of the burned church remained intact and has been incorporated into a daily Mass chapel. The new church includes original items such as the Stations of the Cross and a large oil painting of the Crucifixion that previously hung behind the altar. The design of the new church also includes the brick exterior, arched windows and dark red carpeting, similiar to the old church, parish council secretary Elisa Koehler said.

Other new additions, a Eucharistic adoration chapel and choir loft, were built to complement the old structure and highlighted Sunday afternoon's theme -- a linking of the old structure with the new. Both the parish's youngest member, 13-day-old Ava Folger, and the parish's most senior member, 104-year-old Anne Morrissey, were in attendance, Dietzenbach said.

"Today is a new chapter," the priest said. "We stayed together as a community through the past four years, but there is no substitute to having a church building."