Visit OSV’s ‘Top 10 Catholic Cities’ in America for a road trip you won’t soon forget...

Candles surround a crucifix in the historic El Santuario de Chimayo Church in Chimayo, N.M., July 29, 2020. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)


(OSV News) — Summer is here, and it’s time to travel Catholic America. You’ll find vibrant expressions of Catholic faith in every state — in grand cathedrals and teeny chapels, in underwater statues and holy dirt.

These “Top 10 Catholic Cities” — as compiled from the 2021 book “Monuments, Marvels, and Miracles: A Traveler’s Guide to Catholic America” (OSV, $27.95) — are ranked by their respective number of holy sites and highlight several attractions in and around each city. Travel within a 150-mile radius of these 10 cities and you’ll discover oodles of unique and fascinating holy sites — some sprinkled with good humor and fun trivia. “Seeing is believing,” the saying goes, but “faith-seeing” is even better.

Denver​

It’s a Rocky Mountain (spiritual) high at Denver’s Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Buffalo Bill prayed there, and Julia Greeley — a freed slave and Denver’s “Angel of Charity” named a servant of God with a cause of canonization underway — was the first person entombed at the cathedral. The Mother Cabrini Shrine near Golden, Colorado, holds a miraculous spring, while the soaring steeple of Leadville’s Annunciation Catholic Church — the country’s highest steeple at 11,000 feet above sea level — could be a landing strip for angels. Next door in Wyoming, Cheyenne’s Cathedral of St. Mary is lauded for its stained-glass Sistine Madonna.

Atlanta​

During the Civil War, Father Thomas O’Reilly warned General William T. Sherman, “Burn the Catholic church in Atlanta and every Catholic soldier in the Union army will mutiny!” His feisty legacy lives at Atlanta’s Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Bask in otherworldly light at Abbey Church of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers; two tiers of stained-glass windows cast a blue aura over the nave, and a halo of golden light surrounds the sanctuary. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul hails a John 15:13 hero: Father Patrick Ryan, a servant of God who died tending to yellow fever victims so they might live.

Portland, Oregon​

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