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Greensboro's Mother Mary is back.

A new Virgin Mary was unveiled Wednesday morning on the pedestal outside Greensboro's Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church and revealed a five-foot colored statue that is reminiscent of the one Mother Nature destroyed seven years ago.

A limb that fell during a storm destroyed that statue. A grey fiberglass Mary replaced the color Mary. Then, in late August, the week the city's five colleges returned, the grey fiberglass disappeared. The culprit: vandals.

Now, the color Mary is back. The church bought the $3,000 statue from a church-supply company in Kentucky, using money from the insurance settlement and a donation from an anonymous donor.

Its return is a welcome sight for many. The statue, erected outside the church and Our Lady of Grace Catholic School, had become a symbol of the church, the school, a faith and the entire city.

Parishioners as well as neighbors and city residents often come to the station to sit, contemplate and pray. For the past two months, they sat in front of a three-foot concrete statue that was surrounded by rosaries, prayer cards and flower arrangements.

That changed Wednesday, with the unveiling of the church's new Mary.

Tom Johnson, the parish's business manager, won't say how the new statue was erected — other than to say it was put in Tuesday "pretty solid."

But once the black tarp was taken off Wednesday morning, it's hard not to notice it off West Market Street, one of Greensboro's busiest roads.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com