Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

About this property

The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the fifth-largest cathedral in North America, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. Headed by Cardinal Tobin for the archdiocese, it is located in the Lower Broadway neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. Catholic Mass is offered daily and three times on Sunday in English and in Spanish. Noon Sunday mass is conducted in English with the Cathedral choir. The building, facing Branch Brook Park, is generally regarded as the "most perfect and exact example of French Gothic architecture in the Western Hemisphere." Construction began in 1899 and was finished in 1954. The original design called for an English-Irish Gothic Revival church, but plans were later modified in favor of a French Gothic Revival style. Many art historians consider the cathedral's stained glass to be the second finest in the world, after the Chartres Cathedral. Large circular rose windows of stained glass by the Zettler studio adorn the structure. The 36-foot rose window over the primary entrance is the largest such window in the Catholic Church in the Western Hemisphere. The building is roughly the size of Westminster Abbey, with towers higher than those of that structure as well as those of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. It is home to the largest pipe organ ever built by the Schantz Organ Company, also the largest church organ in New Jersey. The cathedral basilica encloses a variety of chapels honoring saints such as Saint Joseph, and representing different ethnic Catholic groups who live in the Newark area and helped build the cathedral. The structure is named for the Catholic devotion to what is known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, considered by believers to be a symbolic reference to Jesus Christ's love and compassion for humanity. The cathedral contains six chapels arranged around the ambulatory, which is the curved walkway that runs behind the main altar. Five of these are dedicated to saints reflecting the ethnic and racial diversity of the Roman Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Newark at the time of the cathedral's completion. The Chapel of Saint Patrick represents the Catholic communities of the British Isles. The Chapel of Saint Lucy Filippini represents the Italian and Portuguese communities. The Chapel of Saint Boniface represents the German community. The Chapel of Saint Stanislaus of Kraków represents the Polish, Slovak and Hungarian communities. The Chapel of Saint Anne represents the Hispanic, African and Asian communities. Confession is held in this chapel. At the center of the ambulatory, between the St. Lucy Filippini and St. Boniface chapels, sits the Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and considered the crown jewel of the cathedral. The Lady Chapel has an altar of Carrera marble.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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