St. Helena Catholic Church is receiving a $2.7 million-to-$3 million retrofit that will conclude with the 121-year-old landmark worship place taking a quantum step backward. Appearance-wise, anyway.

Give or take several hundred tons of rebar, stabilizing concrete and cutting-edge refurbishing technology that will go into the project, when finished the church will look more like it did originally than it has for decades, according to Deacon Bob Little.

That’s because of discoveries being made as parts of the church are dismantled in the process of making it earthquake-proof.

Last year, much was made of a long forgotten 70-year-old bell found in an upper-level storage room. The bell had been there since a 1946 fire destroyed the church roof and the bell tower where it was kept.

Turns out there were a lot more discoveries to be made about the historic St. Helena Catholic Church and how it used to be.

“When we started this project, it was as simple as adding concrete and steel and figuring out how the structure is, but what we found were all kinds of magical things about this church that nobody knew,” Little said.

He speculated that when the exterior stone walls of the church are temporarily removed during the buttressing phase of the retrofit, more may be found. One possibility is a time capsule behind the cornerstone on St. Helena Catholic’s southeast corner. Time capsules often went into construction projects in the days when the church was built, Little noted.

Among more serious revelations, the beams that hold the sides of the church up are hollow, which can be detected by simply tapping the church’s interior walls. Likely because of the WW II-era premium on metal and other building materials, the construction company that restored the church after the ‘46 fire implanted steel rebar only about seven feet down from the roof.

Now, rebar and concrete pillars coming up from the foundation will be welded to the existing rebar. The whole thing will be held in place by new concrete that will be poured from a level of 16 to 18 feet below the church.

“Because it is a historical monument, we have to pull the hundreds of stones off the buttresses and mark them,” said Little. “Then, once the new concrete and steel are attached to the buttresses and the roof, the stones will go right back up in the exact same spot that they came from.”

The reinforcement is necessary because seismic experts warned that in the event of an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude, St. Helena Catholic Church would sway 14 inches.

“After the retrofit theoretically it will move less than two inches,” said Little. “I don’t know how they know.”

The most stunning post-fire discoveries include five sacred statues, of Jesus, Mary with the Christ-child, etc., and 14 stations of the cross positioned around the sanctuary. Those who attended the church saw all of these as pure white artifacts, but they weren’t always. None of them. This was discovered by Beate Bruhl, an antique restorer who happened into the church while working on a restoration project at Beringer Brothers winery.

Each artifact was, in fact, dramatically colored. Also painted over was the 23-karat gold on the stations of the cross.

“They arbitrarily painted them to match the walls, I guess,” said Little.

All are being restored to their original colors.

Little said that the last mass before closing for the retrofit will be 7:45 a.m. on Dec. 26. The first mass in the Catholic Elementary School gym across the street is scheduled for 5 p.m. the next day. The gym also will be used for baptisms. Daily mass will be held in the cemetery church and weddings at nearby Grace Episcopal Church, Little said.