NORTHERN IRELAND: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL (ROMAN CATHOLIC) OF ARMAGH AND DOWN CATHEDRAL (CHURCH OF IRELAND) OF DOWNPATRICK

 July 11, 2024

We made our way from the Protestant Saint Patrick's Cathedral to the Catholic Saint Patrick's Cathedral and were amused to see the figure on The Bishop's Monument looking over the valley at the rival church. With his right hand raised in blessing and his left indicating the spire of his own church, he seems to be making a statement about which church is better.

To be honest, I have to agree with him. This cathedral was built in phases between 1840 and 1904 after the Church of Ireland appropriated the medieval Cathedral of Saint Patrick discussed in the previous post. This cathedral is a significant structure for Catholics, who have a relatively weak presence in Northern Ireland.

I love the Gothic style, including this arcade of apostolic statues.

SICILY: MONREALE AND PALERMO CATHEDRALS

March 17, 2024

We lucked out in finding a parking space just a few blocks from the Monreale Cathedral, which was about a 30-minute drive from Palermo proper but still part of the metropolitan area.

I love how the neighborhoods are built up around these gems of churches in Europe, as if the church is just part of the neighborhood.

Hey, there's another one of the famous Sicilian pine cones, this one over a foot tall and a decoration at an outdoor cafe.

The Cathedral was built between 1174 and 1182 as the result of a sleepy king. William II of Sicily had fallen asleep under a carob tree near here, and in a dream the Holy Virgin told him to build a church on that spot. When the carob tree was removed so the church could be built, a cache of gold coins was found among the roots and used to finance the church. What a great story!

The official name of this church is the Chapel of San Castrense di Monreale. Saint Castrense is the patron saint of Monreale. William II was given his relic as a wedding gift, and he laid it under the high altar of the cathedral.

Like the Palatine Chapel we had just visited, the church is an amalgamation of Norman, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles.  It is an earlier, larger, and somewhat lesser version of the Palatine Chapel, which was based on the design of this church. Like the Palatine Chapel, this cathedral is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

PORTUGAL: SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

 July 1, 2022

Our final destination of the day was our third pilgrimage site of the trip (the first two being Santiago de Compostela and Bom Jesus Cathedral), The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima.

The story is that in 1917, Mary the Mother of Jesus appeared to three shepherd children--Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lúcia--in a field in Fátima, Portugal. Over a period of five months, the children experienced six visitations. They told others that they were asked by the Virgin to say the rosary and were told three "secrets" regarding events that were to occur. In 1930, the Catholic Church recognized the visions as "worthy of belief" and granted a papal indulgence to pilgrims to the site. The site quickly became an important pilgrimage destination, and it now receives as many as six million pilgrims a year. 

The huge open courtyard of the shrine is twice as large as St. Peter's in Rome, and it reminded us a lot of the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City that we visited in 2018. The Shrine of Fátima, built near the place where the children saw Mary, is one of the largest Marian shrines in the world.

There are two minor basilicas on the property, and we began our visit in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, which has a 213-foot-tall tower topped with a 15,000-pound bronze crown and a cross.

SOUTHERN TEXAS, BEAUMONT: ST. ANTHONY'S CATHEDRAL BASILICA

November 22, 2021

For the first time, the college where I work gave us the entire week of Thanksgiving off. Bob and I just couldn't pass up that opportunity. We started planning a trip to Nashville, but then Covid numbers in that area started looking bad, and most of the places we wanted to go were inside. Where could we go that was less crowded and had more outdoor attractions? 

Why, Texas, of course! After all, we had never been to the Texas Gulf Coast!!

To say I wasn't very excited about our new plan was an understatement. Bob booking a flight that left at 6:05 AM from Palm Springs didn't do much to increase my excitement. I got up at 2:30 AM and we left for the airport at 3:30.

Our flight was uneventful and we arrived in Houston around 11:00 Central Time, picked up a Mitsubishi rental car at Budget, and got on our way.

We headed for the lovely town of Beaumont, Texas, which turned out to be full of surprises. But then, just about every place we have ever traveled to has been full of surprises of some kind.

The first surprise was so wonderful that I'm going to give it its own post. St. Anthony's Cathedral Basilica has to be one of the most beautiful churches we've seen in Texas, and maybe even in the United States.

The exterior was being spray-washed when we visited.

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: CATHEDRAL BASILICA OF THE SACRED HEART

Newark is New Jersey's most populous city (approximately 282,000 residents), is one of the oldest European-settled cities in the United States, and has one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the United States. The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart is 365 feet long and 165 feet wide (about five feet longer and five feet wider than a football field) and took 95 years to design and build. Planning for a cathedral began in 1859, the groundbreaking occurred in 1898, the first mass was held in it in 1928, and the finished cathedral was finally dedicated in 1954.

Sometimes I feel like the remodeling of our house has been about that slow.

One of the most distinct features of the exterior is the two front bell towers, which are rotated 45 degrees so that the corners point out, creating a three-dimensional rather than a flat front. It makes the building feel a little bit like a fairy castle rather than a church.

A series of complicated turrets and steeples can be seen from the back:

A side view:

There were two enormous azalea bushes in full bloom on the grounds:

Note to kids--I love this tribute: