NATCHEZ — A leaking water line might have caused the walls of St. Mary Basilica to crack, a church official said Wednesday.

Church officials noticed cracks in the walls of the building, on the corner of Main and Union streets, start to grow in the last three months, both inside and outside.

“We’ve been having cracking in the building, and we were looking for water leaks,” building and maintenance chairman Daniel Dillard said. “We stopped city water crews (Tuesday) and told them we thought we had a water leak.”

The water crews cut a couple holes in the road in front of the building to find out if there was a leak, Dillard said.

“In the second one, they found a leak in one of their lines,” he said. “It was a lot of water.”

The crew patched the two-inch line, and it’s back in working order, Natchez Water Works Superintendent David Gardner said.

“It doesn’t appear to have caused any damage,” Gardner said. “They’ve had some issues, and they’re looking at it with a structural engineer. We don’t think that (the water line) caused any damage to neighboring building or anything.”

Dillard wasn’t so quick to reach a verdict.

“That’s something that hasn’t been determined yet (if the leak affected the structure),” Dillard said. “The proximity would certainly make me consider it as a contributing factor. But it’s going to take more than that to find out.”

Engineers are looking at the situation, and Dillard said he hoped to have findings and recommendations in a few days.

“We’re still in the fact-finding part of this,” Dillard said. “We don’t really know a lot, but we feel we’re moving forward. It’s hard to determine what’s really happened, but we should know something in a week or so.”