U.S. Catholic Shrine

In Washington this week, more than 200 Roman Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops will dedicate the largest Catholic church in the U.S.

The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is a vast Romanesque-Byzantine tribute to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of U.S. Roman Catholics. The idea of building it was first broached in 1912 by Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, fourth rector of the Catholic University, who lies buried in the new shrine's south crypt. He received a blessing for the project (and $400) from Pope Pius X, and in 1920 the cornerstone was laid at the site in northeast Washington, at Fourth Street and Michigan Avenue.

The building of the shrine, slowed by the Depression and World War II, was carried out without structural steel, like the ancient cathedrals; more than 350 carloads of Indiana limestone were used in its massive walls. The National Shrine is 459 ft. at its longest point and 240 at its widest, has a capacity of 6,000 people. The $250,000 organ is a memorial to deceased chaplains and members of the U.S. armed forces. The 329-ft. bell tower cost $1,000,000, raised by the Knights of Columbus. Two statues of the Virgin by Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic dominate the north and south walls of the church. Above them rises a mosaic dome of blue, red and gold, topped by a gold-leafed steel cross.

Still to be completed, among other projects, are the marble interior of the shrine, eleven chapels which will project from the outside of the building, and some 20 altars within. Catholics will have contributed more than $30 million by the time the shrine is completed ($18 million has been raised so far). Says Monsignor Thomas J. Grady, fifth director of the shrine project: "God was good to us. In the five years it took to build the upper church--with as many as 200 men a day working 200-300 feet up--no one was killed or seriously injured."

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