Waterbury, Connecticut, was once one of the most prosperous cities in the country. The wealth came from brass manufacturing. In the late nineteenth century, there were so many brassware factories and businesses that an immigrant fresh off the boat from Europe could get a job within twenty-four hours of showing up. Naturally, Waterbury was also a very Catholic city. At one point, there were twenty parishes serving all the different ethnic populations. In the mid-twentieth century, it was per capita the most Catholic city in the United States.
As with so many other cities in New England, Waterbury suffered during the wave of de-industrialization during the end of the last century. Today, the city is a shell of its former self: poor, downtrodden, and rated among the most dangerous cities in the country. Ruined factories and boarded-up town houses pockmark the cityscape. Cars line up outside liquor stores with thick metal bars across the windows. Of the twenty Catholic churches, only six remain open. Everything seems shut down, sealed off: even the basilica’s rectory is imprisoned behind steel gates.
But high above the city, atop a hill, glowing purple, white, red, and green, stands a cross. And beneath it, an illuminated sign: HOLY LAND USA.
Holy Land U.S.A. sits on seventeen and a half acres of land alongside a major highway, Interstate 84. It was the creation of John Baptist Greco, a local attorney and philanthropist, who hoped to create a Catholic theme park to serve as a pilgrimage site. Construction began in 1955; upon its opening, the site attracted forty thousand visitors a year. The site originally consisted of set pieces of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Egypt, along with a recreation of the Garden of Eden, a series of Stations of the Cross, a model of the Tower of Babel, and a diorama of Daniel in the lions’ den. The sign and the cross on the hill made the attraction visible for miles.
The decline of the park coincided with the general decline of Waterbury as industry across the country was moved overseas. In 1984, Greco closed it to renew and rebuild, but he died in 1986, leaving the work unfinished. The site was left to the Religious Teachers Filippini. They lacked the funds to repair the site, and they feared the liabilities in keeping it open. And so the sisters kept the park closed upon their acquisition.
Still, the sisters did not abandon Holy Land U.S.A. They hosted weekly prayer meetings at the site, and they allowed a select few people in to visit to restore various parts of the exhibits. But the responsibility was more than they could handle. Trespassing became common, and soon the park was the site of all sorts of illicit activity. In 2010, the brutal assault and murder of Chloe Ottman, a resident of Waterbury, occurred there. She was stabbed to death at the foot of the cross.
These days, Holy Land U.S.A. is privately co-owned by the former mayor of Waterbury, Neil O’Leary, and a local millionaire and car dealer, Fred Blasius. They bought it from the Religious Teachers Filippini in 2013 and immediately started a foundation for its maintenance and restoration. The brains behind the current iteration of the Holy Land is Father James Sullivan. In 2018, Sullivan celebrated a Mass at Holy Land U.S.A.’s chapel, the first since its new ownership, in honor of Father Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus and a Connecticut native. Since then, he has worked on restoring the site, which is now once again open to the public as of 2014.
Sullivan is a native of Waterbury. He became interested in building while living in Washington, D.C., for a year after graduating college in 1982, where he helped repair a convent. After returning to Waterbury, he and his brother John Sullivan established the contracting business Sullivan Brothers, an industry he would work in for twenty-five years; his brother still runs the business.
Sullivan became a priest in 2014. Since 2019, he has served as the rector of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Waterbury. When I speak to him, he says he sees a continuity between his career as a contractor and his vocation to the priesthood: “I’ve gone from building and restoring houses to building and restoring hearts.”
Sullivan’s plans for Holy Land U.S.A. are ambitious. In the near future, he plans to add a series of Stations of the Cross made of fiberglass in three-quarter scale, forty-eight by forty-eight inches in size each. He also hopes to build a grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary, hewn out of the rock of the hill Holy Land U.S.A. sits on. In his mind’s eye, the grotto would be lit by thousands of candles and function as a chapel for Masses with a capacity of up to one hundred people. Sullivan also hopes to build a replica of Christ’s tomb on the site with heaps of disused rocks from excavating parts of the hill.
Sullivan has other plans as well, but he prefers to keep those to himself. Of course, his greatest challenge is funding. The foundation hosts one fundraiser per year, which typically raises about eighty thousand dollars. But to do all that Sullivan hopes to accomplish, the foundation would need millions of dollars. Sullivan is looking for a benefactor. “For plenty of people, a million dollars is a drop in the bucket,” he says. “It’s my hope that if we get the word out there, somebody will reach out to help.”
When I visited Holy Land U.S.A. on a snowy Saturday in December of last year, the site was fairly desolate, but it glowed in the cold light of the sun. A group of middle-aged locals returned from a hike through the gates. A family of Brazilian Christians swayed and danced to Portuguese gospel music in the shadow of the metal cross. “Jesus loves you,” one of them, an elderly grandmother, said. “In Brazil, there is a lot of Christianity. We come here”—to the foot of the cross—“in all kinds of weather. Sun—now snow. It’s quiet. Peaceful here,” she added.
The dioramas of Bethlehem and Jerusalem lie intact. A model of Bethlehem’s inn charmingly has a NO VACANCY sign posted. The Tower of Babel remains unfinished, just like its inspiration. The pyramids and the sphinx lie in ruins, much like Ozymandias’s statue. The cross has been replaced with one that glows the liturgical colors at night—purple in Advent and Lent, white during Christmas and Easter, green during Ordinary Time, and red during the Triduum. A statue of Christ the King looms above the city, and an abandoned forested path marks the future site of the new Stations of the Cross. Little else remains. The Garden of Eden is gone, as is Daniel in the lions’ den. But Sullivan hopes to add something new to the location, while preserving the old.
From atop the hill, all of Waterbury can be seen stretched out beneath, from the train station’s clock tower to the basilica’s steeple. In the midst of a city of a hundred thousand people, a visitor is surrounded by silence, and one feels that one knows how Moses must have felt when he alighted on the top of Mount Sinai.
Sullivan says that Waterbury is improving. The basilica recently had a series of murals painted in its basement by a French artist who spent five years depicting all of salvation history on the walls and ceiling. In 2024, one hundred ninety-two families joined the parish—an average of one every other day.
Most notable is a sign which Sullivan feels to be a good omen. While recently digging an elevator shaft to connect the basilica’s nave with its basement, water began shooting from the earth—on the right side of the basilica’s sanctuary. Sullivan could not help but be reminded of Ezekiel’s vision of the rebuilt temple: “Behold, there ran out waters on the right side.” In Ezekiel’s time, God’s people were exiled in Babylon. Their temple, the center of their world, lay in ruins. Yet Ezekiel had hope, and he gave it to his people: he saw the temple rebuilt; he saw the Holy Land repopulated; he saw the faith restored.
Sullivan hopes that the sign of water flowing from the right side of the basilica is a promise of something similar. He hopes to use the water to make a fountain. If the waters of Knock in Ireland and Lourdes in France can work miracles, why not those in Waterbury? Even if they convey no bodily healing, perhaps the salve is spiritual.
Waterbury, Connecticut, was once one of the most prosperous cities in the country. The wealth came from brass manufacturing. In the late nineteenth century, there were so many brassware factories and businesses that an immigrant fresh off the boat from Europe could get a job within twenty-four hours of showing up. Naturally, Waterbury was also a very Catholic city. At one point, there were twenty parishes serving all the different ethnic populations. In the mid-twentieth century, it was per capita the most Catholic city in the United States.
As with so many other cities in New England, Waterbury suffered during the wave of de-industrialization during the end of the last century. Today, the city is a shell of its former self: poor, downtrodden, and rated among the most dangerous cities in the country. Ruined factories and boarded-up town houses pockmark the cityscape. Cars line up outside liquor stores with thick metal bars across the windows. Of the twenty Catholic churches, only six remain open. Everything seems shut down, sealed off: even the basilica’s rectory is imprisoned behind steel gates.
But high above the city, atop a hill, glowing purple, white, red, and green, stands a cross. And beneath it, an illuminated sign: HOLY LAND USA.
Holy Land U.S.A. sits on seventeen and a half acres of land alongside a major highway, Interstate 84. It was the creation of John Baptist Greco, a local attorney and philanthropist, who hoped to create a Catholic theme park to serve as a pilgrimage site. Construction began in 1955; upon its opening, the site attracted forty thousand visitors a year. The site originally consisted of set pieces of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Egypt, along with a recreation of the Garden of Eden, a series of Stations of the Cross, a model of the Tower of Babel, and a diorama of Daniel in the lions’ den. The sign and the cross on the hill made the attraction visible for miles.
The decline of the park coincided with the general decline of Waterbury as industry across the country was moved overseas. In 1984, Greco closed it to renew and rebuild, but he died in 1986, leaving the work unfinished. The site was left to the Religious Teachers Filippini. They lacked the funds to repair the site, and they feared the liabilities in keeping it open. And so the sisters kept the park closed upon their acquisition.
Still, the sisters did not abandon Holy Land U.S.A. They hosted weekly prayer meetings at the site, and they allowed a select few people in to visit to restore various parts of the exhibits. But the responsibility was more than they could handle. Trespassing became common, and soon the park was the site of all sorts of illicit activity. In 2010, the brutal assault and murder of Chloe Ottman, a resident of Waterbury, occurred there. She was stabbed to death at the foot of the cross.
These days, Holy Land U.S.A. is privately co-owned by the former mayor of Waterbury, Neil O’Leary, and a local millionaire and car dealer, Fred Blasius. They bought it from the Religious Teachers Filippini in 2013 and immediately started a foundation for its maintenance and restoration. The brains behind the current iteration of the Holy Land is Father James Sullivan. In 2018, Sullivan celebrated a Mass at Holy Land U.S.A.’s chapel, the first since its new ownership, in honor of Father Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus and a Connecticut native. Since then, he has worked on restoring the site, which is now once again open to the public as of 2014.
Sullivan is a native of Waterbury. He became interested in building while living in Washington, D.C., for a year after graduating college in 1982, where he helped repair a convent. After returning to Waterbury, he and his brother John Sullivan established the contracting business Sullivan Brothers, an industry he would work in for twenty-five years; his brother still runs the business.
Sullivan became a priest in 2014. Since 2019, he has served as the rector of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Waterbury. When I speak to him, he says he sees a continuity between his career as a contractor and his vocation to the priesthood: “I’ve gone from building and restoring houses to building and restoring hearts.”
Sullivan’s plans for Holy Land U.S.A. are ambitious. In the near future, he plans to add a series of Stations of the Cross made of fiberglass in three-quarter scale, forty-eight by forty-eight inches in size each. He also hopes to build a grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary, hewn out of the rock of the hill Holy Land U.S.A. sits on. In his mind’s eye, the grotto would be lit by thousands of candles and function as a chapel for Masses with a capacity of up to one hundred people. Sullivan also hopes to build a replica of Christ’s tomb on the site with heaps of disused rocks from excavating parts of the hill.
Sullivan has other plans as well, but he prefers to keep those to himself. Of course, his greatest challenge is funding. The foundation hosts one fundraiser per year, which typically raises about eighty thousand dollars. But to do all that Sullivan hopes to accomplish, the foundation would need millions of dollars. Sullivan is looking for a benefactor. “For plenty of people, a million dollars is a drop in the bucket,” he says. “It’s my hope that if we get the word out there, somebody will reach out to help.”
When I visited Holy Land U.S.A. on a snowy Saturday in December of last year, the site was fairly desolate, but it glowed in the cold light of the sun. A group of middle-aged locals returned from a hike through the gates. A family of Brazilian Christians swayed and danced to Portuguese gospel music in the shadow of the metal cross. “Jesus loves you,” one of them, an elderly grandmother, said. “In Brazil, there is a lot of Christianity. We come here”—to the foot of the cross—“in all kinds of weather. Sun—now snow. It’s quiet. Peaceful here,” she added.
The dioramas of Bethlehem and Jerusalem lie intact. A model of Bethlehem’s inn charmingly has a NO VACANCY sign posted. The Tower of Babel remains unfinished, just like its inspiration. The pyramids and the sphinx lie in ruins, much like Ozymandias’s statue. The cross has been replaced with one that glows the liturgical colors at night—purple in Advent and Lent, white during Christmas and Easter, green during Ordinary Time, and red during the Triduum. A statue of Christ the King looms above the city, and an abandoned forested path marks the future site of the new Stations of the Cross. Little else remains. The Garden of Eden is gone, as is Daniel in the lions’ den. But Sullivan hopes to add something new to the location, while preserving the old.
From atop the hill, all of Waterbury can be seen stretched out beneath, from the train station’s clock tower to the basilica’s steeple. In the midst of a city of a hundred thousand people, a visitor is surrounded by silence, and one feels that one knows how Moses must have felt when he alighted on the top of Mount Sinai.
Sullivan says that Waterbury is improving. The basilica recently had a series of murals painted in its basement by a French artist who spent five years depicting all of salvation history on the walls and ceiling. In 2024, one hundred ninety-two families joined the parish—an average of one every other day.
Most notable is a sign which Sullivan feels to be a good omen. While recently digging an elevator shaft to connect the basilica’s nave with its basement, water began shooting from the earth—on the right side of the basilica’s sanctuary. Sullivan could not help but be reminded of Ezekiel’s vision of the rebuilt temple: “Behold, there ran out waters on the right side.” In Ezekiel’s time, God’s people were exiled in Babylon. Their temple, the center of their world, lay in ruins. Yet Ezekiel had hope, and he gave it to his people: he saw the temple rebuilt; he saw the Holy Land repopulated; he saw the faith restored.
Sullivan hopes that the sign of water flowing from the right side of the basilica is a promise of something similar. He hopes to use the water to make a fountain. If the waters of Knock in Ireland and Lourdes in France can work miracles, why not those in Waterbury? Even if they convey no bodily healing, perhaps the salve is spiritual.
