Rev. David Pilling closes the newly installed security gate at the front entrance of St. Augustine Anglican Church in St. John's. (CBC)A combination of break-ins and illegal drug activity on their front doorstep has prompted officials at an Anglican church in St. John's to increase security.

Rev. David Pilling said the church has been forced to install a gate and lock at the front entrance to St. Augustine Church on Westerland Road, in the central part of the Newfoundland city, to keep people from gathering in the area late at night.

'The straw that broke the camel's back was that someone, for I don't know what reason, had sex on the steps.'—Rev. David Pilling

"An awful lot of drugs was sold there, and a lot of drugs was done there," he told CBC News.

The church, which has been operating for more than four decades, has a long, narrow entrance that's built in the shape of a sheltered archway. It was designed that way to make parishioners feel protected when they walked under it to enter the church.

Instead, it has turned into a base for drug dealers and users.

"Many times I've come in and seen different people there, and usually if someone was doing drugs, I'd chat with them for a minute or two. The selling — as soon as people saw me come up, they'd disappear immediately," he said.

Pilling said the problem is that the archway entrance offers a lot of privacy.

"It is secluded … There's very few places that you can see the entranceway from anywhere, except from directly across the entranceway. And as such, it was very easy to hide," Pilling said.

The church has put up with the problems for most of the eight years Pilling has worked there, but he decided to put a stop to it a few months ago when he realized there was more than just drug dealing going on.

Rev. David Pilling says something had to be done to stop illegal activity at the entrance to his church. (CBC)"In October ... the straw that broke the camel's back was that someone, for I don't know what reason, had sex on the steps," he said. "I don't know why on earth you'd want to have that — on cement steps — but they did, and my caretaker and myself we saw the evidence and we said that ... we had to do something."

Pilling hired security companies to advise the church on ways to deal with the problems. He said the church still wants to be viewed as a place where people can go for protection, so they settled on a gate because of its spiritual symbolism.

The metal wire, fence-style gate is pulled across the front doors of the church and padlocked when the building isn't open. Pilling said St. Augustine's has also put another security control in place; campus security officers from nearby Memorial University monitor the building during the day and after hours.