The 6-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary that belongs to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Towson has been restored and placed in a safe, prominent location on the church campus.

The white cement figure of Mary has been missing from the hillside overlooking Bosley Avenue traffic since March, when vandals toppled her off her pedestal and left her lying face down in the ground, minus her left hand.

In the best of times, the Virgin Mary statue was a lone figure standing on a 4.5-foot high pedestal, halfway down the hill from the church on the corner of Bosley Avenue and West Joppa Road.

Now Immaculate Conception's patroness is whole again and standing tall.

She is atop an illuminated, stone configuration near the intersection of Bosley Avenue and Joppa Road that is 19 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its highest point. The installation incorporates the church names in large letters.

"With her arms outstretched it looks like she is the one greeting you and welcoming you to the church," said the Rev. Joe Barr, pastor at Immaculate Conception.

More than $32,000, donated by Immaculate Conception's 3,200 registered member families — and also through gifts from former members and people who had just heard about the vandalism — made the new installation possible. The project also included re-landscaping the hill on which the statue formerly stood.

With its dead tree trunks and tangled dying shrubbery, "it had to be the ugliest place in Towson," Barr said.

It all still looks dead now, but "come spring, it will all come alive," he said.

Police still don't know who damaged the statue, Barr said, noting it looked like a crowbar had been used to pry Mary off her pedestal.

"It was a terrible thing that happened," he said. "It shouldn't happen to any religious house, whether it's Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

"But in this case," he said, "I guess you could say that we have been able to make lemonade from lemons."

Bishop Denis Madden, Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore, will celebrate the 7:30 p.m. Mass at the church on Thursday, Dec. 8, to mark the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, according to Barr.

After the Mass, the bishop will formally bless the restored statue.

NOTE: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect day of the week for the Dec. 8 Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It has been corrected here. Thanks to the comment below for pointing it out.