Atlantic City isn’t all oceanfront boardwalks, beaches, shops and casinos. In the middle of the resort town, my wife, Mary, and I hit a spiritual jackpot — the majestic Church of St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Augustinian friars began building the historic church in 1902, and they didn’t cut corners. They hired stonemasons from Ireland, imported marbles from Italy, brought in stained-glass windows from Germany and commissioned a renowned Church architect, Edward Durang of Philadelphia. Their aim was to give their sanctuary the splendid grace and presence of an Old World cathedral. They succeeded. After three years of meticulous craft and artistry, St. Nicholas was dedicated and the first Mass said on Sept. 17, 1905.

Augustinians started this first Roman Catholic parish in Atlantic City well before the boardwalk appeared. They came to Absecon Island, on which the resort stands, to celebrate the first Mass in 1855. The friars stayed until 1997, when they gave the church to the Diocese of Camden, N.J. Since then, the church has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Over the years, the church has retained the sacred art and architecture familiar to decades of parishioners. The original main altar, of delicately carved white Carrara marble, radiates like a heavenly vision. The tallest altar spire rises above the central tabernacle; the bas-reliefs under the altar’s lace-like Gothic spires and peaks show Christ’s burial and his triumphant resurrection. The Baptismal Chapel is a jewel within a jewel. Added during the Great Depression, it glistens with Venetian gold mosaic tiles bathing walls and ceilings. Symbolic mosaic images hover everywhere — fish, the Burning Bush, the fruitful and barren fig trees and Resurrection symbols like the Easter Lamb. The Holy Spirit oversees them all.

The head of the Rambusch Studio in New York designed the Baptismal Chapel’s magnificent interior. It contains the church’s fifth marble altar, whose resplendent mosaics connect St. Nicholas of Tolentine with the holy sacrifice of the Mass for the holy souls in purgatory — the universal Church remembers such souls on All Souls’ Day each Nov. 2. Behind it, brilliant mosaic scenes tell the story. As St. Nicholas celebrates Mass at the moment of Consecration, angels escort souls released from purgatory by his Mass. He was so fervently devoted to the holy souls and so powerful in getting them out of purgatory with his Masses that, in 1884, Pope Leo XIII declared St. Nicholas the universal patron of the holy souls in purgatory.

Nicholas was born to a poor family in 1245 in Sant’Angelo, Ancona, Italy. At an early age, he joined the Augustinians, was ordained a priest and known by all for his charity, care for the sick and needy and the preaching through which he brought many back to the Church. The saint’s devotion to the souls in purgatory began one 13th-century night when the voice of a departed friar he had known begged him to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the next day for his soul and many others, in order to deliver their souls from purgatory.

During one Mass, Jesus appeared to thank Nicholas for the fervor he brought to his Masses and gave him an apparition of the holy souls in purgatory released by the graces from his Masses. After 30 years at the Tolentine monastery, Nicholas died in 1305. He was canonized in 1446.

On July 1, St. Nicholas of Tolentine entered a new phase at its Pacific Avenue location, when the four parishes in Atlantic City were combined into one and named the Parish of St. Monica. St. Nicholas is one of the two churches to offer daily Masses, including one in Latin every Sunday. It is open daily until 1pm. In its three major phases over 113 years, the message of praying for the holy souls in purgatory remains unmistakably clear, thanks to its patron, St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Joseph Pronechen is the

Register’s staff writer.

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