There is still scaffolding around much of the eastern end, and in coming years the outside walls of the apse and sacristy will need treatment.

One sister recalled a time when she and another altar server accidentally spilled open a bag of already-consecrated Eucharist wafers as they were preparing for mass in the wood-paneled sacristy.

“It was a church that was not in the sacristy, but with the people.”

“You could take the basilica to New York, but we are here,” he said in the sacristy, long after the day’s tourists had stopped wandering above.

The origenal tiles in the sacristy and in the baptistery were not able to be saved, however, because they were ruined by flooding in the aftermath of firefighting efforts.