When researching masses for this past Sunday, I came across the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires. One look and I thought “meh” – we should visit a more beautiful church. Then a small amount of googling reminded me that this was Pope Francis’s parish when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and we had no choice. We were attending mass here.
The mass itself was as good as a mass can be for one person who speaks some Spanish and another person who speaks a little less. The homily felt long since we couldn’t understand it, but the majority of the mass parts were easy to follow. The kneelers were especially hard and wooden – a reminder how spoiled we are in most US churches with our cushioned kneelers. A few things to note about the mass: it was full. Yes – I’m sure a good portion was tourists, but there seemed to be a lot of locals as well. And those locals were young. This parish has not been hit with the predicament in many US parishes where mostly older people come and typically more women then men. I am not a Catholic scholar, so Mom B, Uncle Dan, Fir or Fr. Frank can add their two cents in the comment section, but my anecdotal evidence would support that a lot of pew presence is from older women. There are always exceptions. St. Teresa’s, for example, our home parish in Chicago, has a strong showing from the younger crowd. That youth and energy was one thing (of many) that we loved about the parish.
But back to BA… walking into the Cathedral was like you were transported to a completely different church as compared to the outside structure. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:
There were many side altars and beautiful statues to explore. Another shout out to St. Teresa, a Carmelite, mystic and Doctor of the Church:
St. Michael the Archangel – I tried to google whose head St. Michael is standing on and couldn’t get a clear answer – Satan of some sort, but not clear who is being depicted as Satan here. Possibly Licinius who was slayed by Constantine in 324 AD at the Battle of Adrianople. I’m not sure – again if my religious scholars in the crowd could chime in, that would be helpful.
This was the coolest part of the church, in my opinion. They had two armed soldiers guarding the tomb of José de San Miguel. Michael and I were mostly confused about what was going on and who this person was, but a little research on the line provided a ton of insight into this guy and why Argentinians love him so much. José de San Miguel was a military leader who led a revolution against the Spanish in 1812 in Argentina. After successfully leading his country to independence, José de San Miguel then helped Chile and Peru gain their independence from Spanish colonial rule.
There was surprisingly little fanfare for Pope Francis. It was really just this one bulletin board. But I guess it is keeping in his spirit of being a very humble, low key person.
After mass we spent a few hours wandering around Buenos Aires trying to find a grocery store that was open. Hours. Then Michael cooked us dinner in the AirBNB and we enjoyed it while watching a few amazing movies we found on the tv (in English!!): Snatch, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt2, about 3 minutes of Frozen, Iron Man 2 and 5 terrible minutes of the Hangover part 3.