Saint Joseph

The line-up of the stairs is very remarkable. Pastor Jaak Vandelook was the major driving force behind this line-up but the idea itself comes from Paul Vanderstuyft, a priest and an architect. The seats are positioned in an ellipse with the altar and the ambo (a small lectern that is used to read the Bible) placed at its foci. It is a reinforcement of the second word service, as the Second Vatican Council propagated. “The word became flesh” and still lives among the people.

Until a few decades ago, Saint Cornelius was strongly venerated in Moorsel. A special mass was held every first Tuesday of the month, and on Easter Monday many pilgrims from nearby villages came to honor him. People invoked Cornelius for illnesses threatening children, such as convulsions, whooping cough, and seizures. Statues of Saint Joseph and Saint Cornelius stand on the church façade.

The mausoleum of the Coosemans family was in such a poor condition in 2002 that the church council decided to restore it. A new cover stone was cut and the old stone was walled in a back wall. It serves as a tribute to the builders of this church.

Since the first existence of the church, there has been a Lourdes Grotto at the backside. Mary gets some special attention during the month of May. People come together on Palm Sunday to consecrate palm branches and to go to church in procession. A candle procession leaves at the grotto after prayer on the Feast of Assumption and goes to Our Lady of the Voskapel.

Moorsel owns a beautiful Gothic foldable lectern with the inscription “AVE GRATIA PLENA”. It is made out of one piece of beech wood. According to the curator of the Pilgrim museum in Leiden there are only three lecterns likes this one left. He knew the location of two of them: one is in his museum and one in an American museum. Could it be that Moorsel owns the third one?

An exceptional statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception can be found in this church. It was a gift from the nuns of Overijse. Art historian Lode De Clercq describes it as follows: “Wooden sculpture (oak), probably from the first half of the 18th century. The statue is 116 cm high (3,8 feet).” Mary is characterised by a lenghtened proportion. The extreme thinnes is even more enhanced by the double pedestal. A small sample taken from the back has shown that the Madonna still wears her original polychrome.