Nursing staff are trained in the former parish hall

A prayer was said once again at the threshold, a thank you for seven decades of accommodation for everyone from youth groups to senior citizens, and God’s blessing was asked for the new users. Before that, the last items were collected from the parish hall and the keys to a now completely empty building were handed over to the nursing director of the Pyhrn-Eisenwurzen Clinic, Walpurga Auinger.

The Upper Austrian Health Holding Company acquired the parish hall, which was sold from the church’s property, last year. A bargain: just 200 meters from the hospital, the Health Holding Company can now expand its school for health and nursing, which is already bursting at the seams. After a short renovation, classrooms and teaching rooms will be set up in the autumn.

The sale of the parish hall had also become “necessary” for the parish, as parish council chairman Jakob Haijes announced. He did not mean that the parish was already as poor as a church mouse and urgently needed money. But the sale of the parish hall fits into the concept of a major renovation that is pending in the parish. Firstly, the 300,000 euro renovation of the church’s facade has now been completed, after the path underneath had to be closed off due to crumbling wall sections. The church shines again in a light pink color, as it did in earlier times, before the original paint was whitewashed. The Federal Monuments Office wanted the church to shine again in the same pink color that the town hall and Neupernstein Castle were once painted with.

For the time being, the youth group’s home meetings will be held in the Protestant rectory in a spirit of Christian brotherhood, and the parish council will be given the city council meeting room in the town hall as an alternative. In a multi-million dollar project, the rectory is being converted into a parish center. “We will then have all the divisions under one roof,” says Haijes. A solution, including the sale of the rectory, was reached with the help of external consultants. Of course, several generations of churchgoers have memories of the old rectory.