Churches of Montreal

Basilique Notre Dame is the most famous church in Montreal, which is internationally known for its fantastic interior. The interior is covered with vivid blue and gold stars.  The church was founded in 1672 but has undergone renovations making it the "newest" of all Montreal churches.

There was a line of people waiting to go in...

It's hard to find words to describe the beauty of the interior.  It took my breath away!

Close-up of the Last Supper carving on the altar...

The pulpit

The organ was built in 1891 and has been modified a few times.  It now has 4 keyboards, 99 stops and approximately 7,000 pipes.

The pipe organ

One of the confessionals

Saint Joseph's Oratory is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and national shrine.  It is Canada's largest church and the twenty-seventh largest church building in the world.  The dome is the 3rd largest of its kind in the world. The Oratory has six levels. It was founded by Brother Andre in 1904 and dedicated to St. Joseph to whom he credited all his reported miracles. Brother Andre was canonized in October 2010.  More than 2 million pilgrims visit the Oratory every year.

There are 283 stairs from the street to the Oratory. There are 99 stairs in the middle reserved for pilgrims who wish to climb on their knees.

Brother Andre

There is a devotional area with several carvings of St. Joseph and thousands of candles.

The central lampstand in front of the statue of St. Joseph holds 3,500 votive candles.

In the devotional area there are two walls filled with canes and crutches representing people who were healed.

Outside there is a beautiful garden featuring Stations of the Cross.

St. Patrick's Basilica is one of Montreal's best churches. Founded in 1843, it has preserved its original interior with minimum renovation.  It was built to serve the needs of Irish immigrants who came to Montreal in great numbers due to the famine and other troubles in Ireland.  Today it is the mother church of the English-speaking Catholics of greater Montreal. 

Close-up of the Altar

The pulpit

Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral is a minor basilica in Montreal and the third largest church in Quebec.  It was built in two stages from 1875 to 1894.  It is meant to be a scaled down version of the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  It covers approximately 1/4 the area of St. Peter's Basilica.

Instead of the statues of the 12 apostles on the façade of St. Peter's, the front of the cathedral is topped by statues of the patron saints of 13 parishes of Montreal who donated them. 

Covering the altar is a neo-baroque ciborium or baldaquin, with twisting columns.  It was created in Rome in 1900 and is a reproduction of the baldacchino in St. Peter's.  It is fully hand-made and made with red copper and gold leaf. 

The ceiling

The Bishops' Mortuary Chapel

The churches we saw in Montreal were all beautiful. 

More on Montreal and Quebec City in my next posts.