Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador
Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador | |
---|---|
Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador | |
Religion | |
Affiliation | Catholic Church |
Rite | Roman Rite |
Patron | Transfiguration of Jesus |
Location | |
Location | Av. Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero y 2 Av. Sur #213, San Salvador |
Country | El Salvador |
Architecture | |
Architect(s) | Dominikus Böhm |
Type | Cathedral |
Date established | 28 September 1842 (as the 1st cathedral) |
Groundbreaking | 17 September 1880 (2nd) 12 October 1956 (3rd) |
Completed | 1842 (1st) 1888 (2nd) 1999 (3rd) |
Demolished | 19 March 1873 (1st)(Earthquake) 8 August 1951 (2nd)(Conflagration) |
Specifications | |
Direction of façade | South |
Elevation | 664 m (2,178 ft) |
Website | |
Official Site |
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (Spanish: Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador) is the cathedral church of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador in San Salvador, El Salvador.
History
The cathedral site is the place where the old Temple of Santo Domingo (dedicated to
The second wooden cathedral, completed in 1888, served as the seat of San Salvador's archbishops. On August 8, 1951, the Old San Salvador Cathedral was consumed by fire as a distraught crowd of onlookers watched.[1]
For the next forty years, the San Salvador Cathedral was a barren concrete structure of exposed bricks and jutting iron buttresses. During the late 1970s, Archbishop Óscar Romero famously deferred completion of the Cathedral in order to fund projects for the poor. The site was also the stage of several national sagas, including the grand funerals of assassinated political figures, and Romero's fiery Sunday Masses. On May 9, 1979, 24 demonstrators were gunned down by supposedly security forces on the front steps of the cathedral during the San Salvador Cathedral Massacre.[2]
An even greater toll was exacted on Palm Sunday, March 30, 1980, during the funeral of Óscar Romero (who was assassinated Monday, March 24, 1980). At his funeral, 44 people were killed during a stampede after some elements, allegedly members of security forces (although it has never been corroborated) fired on mourners/worshippers and on Romero's funeral cortege. The gunmen were never officially identified. Later, the square in front of the cathedral was the site of rapturous celebrations after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords that ended the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992. The cathedral was completed and inaugurated on March 19, 1999, and finished off with a festive tiled facade by the Salvadoran master Fernando Llort.[1]
The church was twice visited by
In late December 2012, the Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, ordered the removal of Llort's tiled ceramic mural facade of the cathedral without consulting the national government or the artist. Workers chipped off and destroyed all 2,700 tiles of the mural.[4]
Architecture and style
The festive and colorful facade surrounds a shrine to an image of the Divine Saviour of the World (
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e "Catedral Metropolitona". Archived from the original on 7 October 2006. Retrieved 4 December 2006.
- ^ "1979: El Salvador cathedral bloodbath". 1979-05-09. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Greeting of the Holy Father John Paul II to Catechists in the Cathedral of San Salvador". Vatican. 8 February 1996. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
- ^ Heidenry, Rachel (6 January 2012). "Archbishop Orders Destruction of Salvadoran Mural". Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Retrieved 23 March 2022.