Barcelona, Spain, Oct 11, 2010 / 15:54 pm
The Catholic architect, Antonio Gaudi, intended his unfinished masterpiece, the Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona, to be a sort of “catechesis,” said Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona.
The church, the cardinal said in his weekly column, is “a unique church in the world,” not only because of the technical innovations involved in its construction, but also for its intensive “biblical and liturgical symbolism.”
Pope Benedict XVI will consecrate the Church of the Holy Family and declare it a basilica during his Nov. 6-7 visit to Spain. In advance of the visit, Cardinal Sistach spoke about the deeply Catholic vision of Gaudi, who died in 1926 and whose sainthood cause was introduced at the Vatican in 2009.
“If we look at the church from outside, with its eighteen bell towers and its façades and walls, we find ourselves before the reality of the Church: the highest bell tower dedicated to Jesus Christ; it is surrounded by the four evangelists; in the apse, like a mother’s womb, is the Virgin Mary; and the twelve apostles distributed in groups of four on each of the three main facades (of the Church, representing): the birth, the passion, the glory,” Cardinal Sistach explained.