Tag Archives: Catholic Church

Art, History

Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Masterpiece

Architect Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece, Barcelona’s enormous Basilica of the Sagrada Família (Basilica of the Holy Family)—as of 2026, the tallest church in the world—is impressive, original, remarkable. Its light-filled and colorful interior is vibrant and crisply carved; it’s hard to miss the beauty in the interior’s exuberant expressions of joy. But is its agitated, unorthodox, unsettling exterior with its surprising juxtapositions of elements in unexpected shapes, combinations, and mud-colored materials beautiful? Yes, though not in the expected, formal way that medieval Gothic cathedrals or 19th century New England Greek Revival buildings are. It is the strangeness of Sagrada Família’s beauty that makes it so extraordinary. Does that odd beauty amplify the basilica’s message of the power of Christian love? I think it does.

Though I am no longer a person of faith, I was raised in the Christian tradition. I still delight in many aesthetic elements of it—art, architecure, music, storytelling. Today, I approach religious structures like basilicas primarily as artistic and cultural marvels. However, I still feel their emotional resonance, and sense the deep spiritual impacts they have on believers. They still evoke in me strong feelings of respect and awe.

The full height of Sagrada Família is viewed in May 2026, just after its tower was erected. Construction cranes are still in place.
Sagrada Família, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, as seen in May 2026, just after its tower was erected, making it the tallest church in the world | Image via Wikimedia Commons by Canaan, CC BY-SA 4.0

To eyes trained on the crisp lines and exact precision of medieval Gothic cathedrals, the organic and indistinct quality of this Catalan basilica’s undulating and hard-to-decipher surfaces can be confusing, bizarre—even off-putting. The Nativity Façade in particular is full of irregular figures and materials that blend strangely into one another. They do not have the crisply rendered formal expressions of Heavenly majesty and might that medieval stone cathedrals do.

Gothic cathedrals had precise verticals and evenly spaced flying buttresses, each one perfectly reproducing the one before. Gaudí’s religious dioramas are accumulations of images and shapes, some obscured by the sheer volume of activity around them. Though also carefully carved, Gaudi’s basilica gives the sense of being freely sculpted, not carved slowly and precisely into wood or stone. The three-dimensional people and scenes on the exterior feel as if they’d been gathered like mud by human hands, then pressed into the cathedral facade, instead of carved from stone. These sculpted façades have a definite gravity and weight to them; they seem to drip downward from Heaven rather like (forgive me) a muddy and collapsing hillside.

The extreme detail and irregularity of the Nativity Façade is shown in detail. Made of monochromatic mid-toned brown stone, its Gothic windows are pressed closely together, bumping up against chaotic masses of botanical, human, and architectural details over doorways that incorporate columns, turrets, and other structures.
The chaotic Nativity Façade of the exterior of the basilica embeds tiny characters in highly detailed downward cascades that resemble melting clay when viewed from a distance | Laura Grey

Is such an erratic, unexpected, and distinctive agglomeration of elements ugly, bad, or wrong? No! Not to the millions who love Gaudí’s personal, human, and singular vision of the beauty and wonder of his faith and his God. For them, Gaudí’s basilica accomplishes things that such grand structures rarely can. These include evoking feelings of both grandeur and intimacy, and precision and irregularity. The basilica combines the unusual combination of feelings and forces to celebrate the elevation of a human family into a holy one—the beatification and glorification of the most elemental elements of human society: a mother, a father, and a child. In Gaudí’s religious imagery, visitors can recognize their own families, as well as themselves. The greatest, most all-encompassing story in a Christian life, the story of Jesus, is made personal, real, and human by telling it through a structure both more vast than is comprehensible, and also deeply intimate and personal.

Instead of static, precisely defined features, Gaudí’s surfaces feel hand-sculpted and in motion. This quality gives Sagrada Família the feel of a living, breathing entity. It entrances some visitors, and makes them feel closer to the emotional core of Christianity—a very deep and very human love of God inspired by the sacrifice of his human son. Of course, for others, the building’s style and structure evoke feelings of the instability and impermanence that come from relying on humanity’s irregularities and imperfections.

Some visitors revel in Gaudí’s expression of the humanity of God made man in the body of Jesus. They feel the undulating unevenness of the building materials and decorations signify the humanity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—the Holy Family for whom the basilica was named.

Others find greater security, awe, and majesty in the precision of more traditional cathedral architecture. They look at a structure like St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, or Our Lady of Chartres Cathedral in France, and are awed, yes. But they are also amazed that such a remarkable and precise celebration of the glories of Heaven could be accomplished on Earth by thousands of human hands over hundreds of years. They feel the humanity inherent in the majestic structure, too. Just not in the same way.

A view halfway down a wall from the ceiling of the Sagrada Família shows the variety of the window sizes, large and small, and the intricately carved stone walls that create hundreds of small angular shadows as lights beam down from above and inward through the glass
Light rushes into the basilica’s interior through blue, green, and yellow stained glass, painting the ceiling and walls with vibrant washes of color | Laura Grey

But whatever one thinks of Gaudí’s exteriors, the interiors of Sagrada Família are another thing entirely! What magical spaces full of jewel-toned light! Standing inside that magnificent space, so different from any other, one can understand how it so often inspires people to feel devotion, awe, and the sensation of a divine presence. Gaudí’s basilica may evoke discomfort because of the organic, undulating, even unstable quality of its exterior. But during the very same visit, its interior brings a sense of delight, ease, and glory through the surprisingly naturalistic forms and colors created inside, thanks to the play of light through its windows and its forest of unusual columns.

In one particular, Sagrada Família has something charming in common with the medieval cathedrals of 900 years ago. One sees evidence of lighthearted humor in Gaudí’s sculpted tortoises and turtles, small but devoted guardians of the basilica that can be found holding up several pillars. The creatures provide welcome lightness and comic relief, as gargoyles or self-portraits of sculptors and architects did on medieval façades. 

A tall view showing the interior of the basilica from ceiling downward, including Gothic arches and a rose window, a smaller circular window behind a white marble carving of a saint, and tall columns with strange, abstract lights with glass lenses that look rather like eyes surrounded by eyelashes
The basilica incorporates some traditional cathedral structures—rose windows, ceiling bosses, columns, religious sculptures, and Gothic arches—while also introducing distinctly modern architectural details and abstract botanical shapes | Laura Grey

Gaudí had an extraordinary vision for the basilica, for which he became chief architect a year after building was begun in 1882. By the time he died as a result of a tram accident in 1926, he had spent 44 years reshaping the plans and implementing his Gothic and Art Nouveau-inspired designs for the building, which was only one-quarter complete at the time of his death. The basilica is still unfinished, but it is nearing completion. As of 2026, with the raising of the 566-foot-high central Tower of Jesus Christ, Sagrada Família became the world’s tallest church. It was inaugurated and blessed by Pope Leo XIV on June 10, 2026, in honor of the centenary of Gaudí’s death.

Though the cathedral was his greatest work, Gaudí managed to design and oversee the construction of a number of other major buildings, several of which hold UNESCO World Heritage status. These include the Park Güell, the Palau Güell, and the Casa Milà, Casa Vicens, and Casa Batlló; Sagrada Família’s Nativity façade, crypt, and apse; and the crypt of the Colònia Güell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló. The architect is so beloved in Catalonia that a sainthood guild has attempted to canonize him since 1992. In 2025, shortly before his death, Pope Francis declared Gaudí venerable; the Vatican described him as possessing “heroic virtue.”

A view of the ceiling includes views of the curving stone stairwells that climb to the ceiling among tree-like columns under bright floodlights that evoke stars in the sky
The sense of controlled chaos, movement, and intricacy of detail that plays out in monochromatic tones outside continues inside, but in a more linear way, and awash in color | Laura Grey

Before visiting Barcelona, I had never experienced such diametrically opposed aesthetic impressions about the interior and the exterior of a house of worship. That dichotomy is part of what makes this structure a masterpiece. There’s the fresh, strange wonder of the mind that envisioned it. And there’s his willingness to escape the linear precision of traditional cathedral architecture and explore a new, if sometimes lumpy, indistinct, even unsettling vision. The softened shapes bring this sacred space closer to the imprecise and organic shapes of nature, human bodies included. Visiting it may even make imagining the experiences of The Holy Family feel more personal and immediate to some visitors, while still expressing the grandeur of God. 

But, of course, what really brought the cathedral to life was a century of talent and faith expressed by the thousands of craftspeople who forced it into being. For an architectural plan is only a dream until the muscles and sinews, eyes and mind, and sweat and strain of those who build it combine to make it real.  

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The interior of the basilica was designed to evoke a forest. According to Gaudí’s vision, each type of column represents a different species of tree. The light that floods the interior reminds one of a colorful garden, or the changing of light from dawn to dusk, or, for some, the glory of God | Laura Grey

Film & Television, History

Philomena Lee and the Magdalen Laundries

Philomena

Actor Judi Dench often plays unsmiling, all-knowing, uncompromising women who cannot be fooled, but in her Oscar-nominated role playing Philomena Lee in Stephen Frears’s film Philomena, she gives a unexpectedly soft, poignant and sympathetic performance that displays her versatility and range. The film is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, and Irishwoman who became pregnant as a teenager in 1951 and was sent to a remote Irish abbey during her pregnancy. There she was forced by nuns to work as a laundress alongside other unwed mothers, and was made to stay on working at the laundry without pay for four more years as penance for the sin of having had premarital sex, and to pay the abbey for the costs of caring for her during her pregnancy.

The practice of locking up young unwed mothers in what were known as “Magdalene asylums” or “Magdalene laundries” was common in Ireland and Britain in the 19th century, and it spread to other European countries and to the U.S. and Canada. The practice lasted well into the 20th century. The last Magdalene asylum in Ireland was in operation until 1996. At these workhouses girls were sometimes beaten, often locked inside against their will and sometimes forbidden to leave even after they became adults.

The Catholic Church enjoyed free labor from these women, and embarrassed parents of unwed pregnant teens were often so relieved to avoid the public shame of having their daughters’ sins paraded before society that many abandoned their children to the Magdalene sisters forever. Families often told neighbors and friends that their daughters had gone to live with family, or emigrated, or even died, all in an effort to save themselves from shame and social ostracism.

While these teen girls worked long hours in steamy laundries, their children were watched over by nuns in nurseries. At the abbey where Philomena lived, children were often adopted out to American married couples who sought children in return for generous donations to the abbey. Philomena’s much-loved son was adopted by an American couple and taken away without warning one day while she was working. She had no chance to say goodbye, she had no idea that her little boy had been flown to America, and she was not told that his named had been changed.

All her efforts to learn what became of her son were rebuffed by the abbey, which destroyed her records and denied knowledge of her son’s name and whereabouts. Ashamed by her plight but desperately sad to have lost her son, Philomena sought him secretly for a half century without luck. Finally, she enlisted the help of Martin Sixsmith, an out-of-work journalist and former government advisor to the Labour Party. Martin and Philomena traveled to America together and learned extraordinary things about Philomena’s son and the abbey’s deceptive practices. Their story of their adventure together was published by Sixsmith in 2009 in his book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, described by the L.A. Times as “a serio-comic travelogue full of heart-rending discovery and the triumph of forgiveness over hate.”

Previews made it look like a manipulative tear-jerker about a naive old lady with a can-do attitude and a big heart, the sort of story that could turn sickly-sweet in under a minute. Happily, it stars Judi Dench and satirist Steve Coogan, two actors famous for their droll, whip-smart performances, and it benefits from the tart and clever writing of Coogan, who coauthored the screenplay. He is known for his cynical, sarcastic portrayals, and he shows his dark wit in films like The Trip and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. In England he’s well known for his most popular creation, a character named Alan Partridge described as “a socially awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality.”

I knew better than to expect mindless, treacly antics from Coogan or from director Stephen Frears, whose smart, often dark films include Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette (which starred a young Daniel Day-Lewis), Prick Up Your Ears (with Gary Oldman) and The Grifters (a dark little masterpiece with John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston). Frears has no fear of difficult subjects or ugly moments. Weighing all these facts, I put aside my worries that this could be a manipulative little feel-good flick. Happily, I found it a movingly acted film about an unworldly, seemingly simple woman who turns out to be more complex and determined than people expect.

The battle between the jaded, antireligious cynicism of Martin and the every-day-is-a-gift devout positivity of Philomena is at the core of the film, but Dench’s portrayal shows the spirited openmindedness of our seemingly old-fashioned heroine. Her sense of hopefulness and appreciation for small kindnesses is nicely balanced by exasperation with Martin’s dour, dark, angry worldview. He is not won over by her endless sweet simplicity, but he is moved by her because he recognizes that she has insights into people and situations that he, with all his experience and inside information but lack of empathy, misses.

Martin recognizes that Philomena’s story is a door into a huge and devastating world of widespread, long-term institutional abuse of the most vulnerable among us: abandoned, pregnant teen girls and small children. He sees that she has a power to connect with people that he lacks because he is often closed to anything but the fulfillment of his own expectations and prejudices. The journey they take together becomes more tangled and difficult than they expect, and it becomes more personally engaging and meaningful than Martin could have guessed.

[Originally published on Laura Grey’s Little Hopping Bird blog.]