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‘ Spiritual Pilgrimage’: Photographer’s Quest to Capture Every Cathedral and Basilica in the US

Michie

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As Benedict XVI told priests and seminarians at the cathedral in Bressanone, Italy, in August 2008, ‘on the basis of the cathedral’s beauty, we succeed in visibly proclaiming God, Christ and all his mysteries.’

Photographing all 193 cathedrals and 93 basilicas across the United States seems like a daunting project for anyone. But 10 years ago, Andrew Masi determined to visit and photograph each one — from east to west, north to south.

On Sunday, July 21, Masi headed back to the Cathedral-Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, where his idea became firmly planted. He considered this visit a “homecoming” to the place where he decided to begin this quest as a “spiritual pilgrimage to visit and photograph all the Catholic cathedrals and basilicas in the United States,” he told the Register. “I just celebrated my 10th anniversary this past April.”

Masi’s idea started when he was at the Newark basilica on Easter Sunday in 2014. Waiting for Mass to begin, he was “gazing around the majestic cathedral and taking in everything from the architecture to the large, life-sized Stations of the Cross, to the beautiful stained-glass windows, to the magnificent pipe organ,” he recalled.

He kept thinking and wondering “if all the cathedrals in the United States look just as gorgeous, big and amazing as this one. That’s when the idea came into my head to see for myself and to photograph them.”

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