Work began Tuesday on the completion of the spire atop the Virgin Mary’s tower of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and is scheduled to be completed in December.
The spire will consist of a crown at the base, and a shaft topped with a star. The crown will be made of stone, almost 20 feet in height, with tips rising in an ascending sequence surmounted with 12 smaller stars.
Construction began April 20 with the placement of the wooden formwork, which will be followed by the assembly of a large part of the shaft.
When completed, the total height of the Virgin’s tower and spire will be over 450 feet, the second tallest of several towers.
The almost 60-foot shaft will have a geometric hyperboloid decoration with three arms supporting the star that tops the spire and will be made of concrete colored white and blue.
The spire will terminate with a 12-point star 24 feet in diameter made of textured glass and illuminated from within, symbolizing the morning star, “the sign of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, the faithful protector who guides us to Jesus by day and by night,” the Sagrada Familia construction project stated.
The cornerstone of the basilica was laid March 19, 1882. The basilica is the masterpiece of Antonio Gaudi, who devoted 43 years of his career to the project. Construction has been interrupted over the years for various reasons, but is nearing completion.
Though unfinished, Sagrada Familia was consecrated in 2010 by Benedict XVI.
A date for the project’s completion has been set for 2026, 100 years after Gaudí died in a car accident. Since his death, the progress has been based off the artist’s plaster models and copies of his drawings, which had been partially destroyed in a fire set during the Spanish Civil War, and which were later reconstructed.
The architect was a devout Catholic and has numerous modernist architectural pieces throughout Barcelona. His cause for canonization was opened in Rome in 2003.
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Jonathan Price, a member of Jimmy Lai’s international legal team, appears on “EWTN News Nightly” with host Tracy Sabol on Dec. 19, 2023. / Credit: EWTN News Nightly
CNA Staff, Dec 20, 2023 / 11:55 am (CNA).
A lawyer representing embattled Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai said the Hong Konger is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the legal system that is now controlled by Chinese Communist Party authorities.
Lai’s trial in Hong Kong began this week. He was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region.
Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,000 days under the law. He has been accused of colluding with foreign adversaries and conspiracy to defraud and is facing a possible life sentence.
Jonathan Price, a human rights lawyer with the U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers, which is representing Lai in international matters, told “EWTN News Nightly” host Tracy Sabol on Tuesday that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”
“Its legal system has been subverted” by the 2020 law, Price said; that law is controlled by a “politically appointed committee” rather than an impartial judiciary.
“The judges in Jimmy Lai’s national security law trial … are handpicked judges, licensed, in effect, to try national security law cases because of their political fealty to Beijing,” Price told Sabol.
“So in those circumstances, it is not how you or I would recognize fair judicial proceedings,” he said. “And you’ve got to remember as well that recently, the Hong Kong director of national security boasted that the national security law has a 100% conviction rate.”
In “any rule-of-law compliant jurisdiction, that would be a red flag,” Price argued. “It cannot be right that literally everybody accused of a crime is guilty, but that’s how they’ve been operating the national security bill. So I’m afraid we don’t think that he’s likely to receive a fair trial.”
Lai has been vocal in his faith. He was baptized and received into the Church by Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, in 1997. He said in 2020 that his decision to stay in Hong Kong and place himself in danger was informed by his belief in God.
Price on Tuesday echoed those remarks. He noted that Lai’s faith had “not been made a factor explicitly” in the trial against him. But “no doubt his faith played a part in the conviction with which he pursued his activities,” including pro-democracy activism.
Lai “saw that Chinese authoritarianism would ruin Hong Kong,” Price said. “And he made it his life’s work to try to hold onto the Hong Kong, and the freedoms in Hong Kong, that he loved, and those included the freedom for him to practice his religion.”
“So in many ways, his conviction [meant] that he stayed in Hong Kong when he could have left,” Price said. “He was a man of enormous means and huge international connections” and could easily have left the region to avoid arrest, Price said.
But “he chose to stay, and that is a mark of his conviction, a mark of his faith.”
Lai’s lawyers have asked the court to throw out sedition charges against the Catholic activist. The judges are expected to rule on that request by the end of the week, with the trial itself projected to continue for several months.
President Donald Trump in 2017. / Credit: DropOfLight/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 16, 2024 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
A New York Times article published Friday afternoon claims that former President Donald Trump told advisers he would su… […]
African American Heritage Hymnal in a pew at Cure d’Ars Catholic Church in Denver. / Jonah McKeown/CNA
Denver Newsroom, Mar 16, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
A new survey of Black Catholics in the United States sheds light on what makes Black expressions of Catholicism unique, but also highlights the fact that Black Catholics remain a minority in the country as a whole, and in most parishes.
The survey found that Black Catholics are significantly less likely than other Catholics — and also less likely than Black Protestants — to attend a church where most of the other parishioners are of the same race or ethnicity they are.
About 6% of the Black population in the U.S. — around 3 million total people — is Catholic, compared with some 66% who are Protestant. Black Catholic communities in the U.S. include not only African-Americans, but also African and Caribbean immigrants. They make up about 4% of all Catholic adults.
Black Catholic communities have been present in the United States for centuries, with large African-American Catholic populations in cities including Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and numerous cities throughout the South. Overall, 45% of Black Catholics in the U.S. live in the South, while 29% live in the Northeast, 15% live in the West, and 11% live in the Midwest.
Pew’s survey suggests that only a quarter of Black Catholics who attend Mass at least a few times a year report that they typically go to a Mass where most other attendees are Black, and about 17% of Mass-going Black Catholics say they worship at a “Black church.”
That compares with 80% of White Catholics who worship where most attendees are White, and 67% of Hispanic Catholics who worship where most attendees are Hispanic, Pew reported. And in contrast, more than two thirds of Black Protestants say they attend a predominantly Black church.
Pew’s survey drew on a sample of nearly 9,000 Black Americans and was conducted between Nov. 19, 2019-June 3, 2020.
According to the survey, 59% of Black Catholics say they pray at least once a day, while roughly half say that religion is very important in their lives. Black Catholics are somewhat more likely than White and Hispanic Catholics to say they pray every day, and somewhat more likely than White Catholics to say religion is very important to them. Black Catholics also are more likely than other Catholics to say they rely “a lot” on prayer for guidance in major life decisions.
Worship at predominantly Black Catholic parishes is different from that of predominantly White parishes. For one thing, Black Catholics are much more likely to report that other attendees often or sometimes call out “amen” or other expressions of praise during Mass.
Black Catholic Masses are typically longer than those attended by White Catholics; more than a third of Black Catholics say their Masses are longer than 90 minutes. But Black Catholic Masses are still shorter on average than most Black Protestant worship services.
A priest and deacon process up the aisle during a Mass at Cure d’Ars Catholic Church, a predominantly African-American parish in Denver, on Sept. 1, 2021. Jonah McKeown/CNA
About a quarter of Black Catholics say they have experienced jumping, shouting, and dancing spontaneously during Mass, or charismatic forms of worship such as speaking in tongues. Still, Black Catholics are less likely to report that these more charismatic forms of worship are present at their churches than are Hispanic Catholics, or Black Protestants.
Black Catholics also tend to travel farther to get to Mass than their White or Hispanic counterparts, with 41% saying they have to travel more than 15 minutes to get to Mass.
In terms of preaching at Mass, Black Catholics are more likely to report hearing a homily about racism, and slightly less likely to hear a homily about abortion, than are White Catholics.
A majority of Black Catholics — 77% — say opposition to racism is essential to what being Christian means to them. This contrasts with only 26% of Black Catholics who say that attending church regularly is essential to their faith, 22% who say opposing abortion is essential, and just 16% who say avoiding sex before marriage is essential to their religious identity. In addition, the survey suggests that most Black Catholics (71%) believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Compared to White or Hispanic Catholics, more Black Catholics are converts to the faith. Roughly half of Black adults who were raised Catholic still identify as Catholic (54%), compared with 61% of White adults and 68% of Hispanic adults who were raised as Catholics and still identify with the faith, Pew reports.
Compared to White or Hispanic Catholics, Black Catholics differ in their expectations of what their parish should be like, and what the congregation should do. Black Catholics are more likely than White or Hispanic Catholics to say they think it is essential that churches offer a sense of “racial affirmation or pride,” as well as to say it is essential that churches assist people who need help with bills, housing, or food.
A correction is in order. Gaudi was not killed in a car accident. He was run over by a trolley.