Church #79 - Blessed Sacrament, Providence

This church is very close to where I live - about a 20 minute walk down Academy Ave. The parish has an attached school. I also happen to know that there's cell tower equipment in the church's bell tower, which goes a long way toward helping the parish pay its bills.

A couple of these pictures came out a lot blurrier than I would have wanted - sorry!

As I've mentioned in at least one earlier post, Blessed Sacrament is easily a contender for the most beautiful church in the Diocese, the closest thing we have (at least in my opinion) to what an old European cathedral looks like. It was definitely part of the impetus for my decision to do this pilgrimage, since I was so impressed with it the first time I stopped in. It's a huge, old-school church that was restored pretty recently, and it's packed with great art.

After looking around for a while, I find that my favorite part of the church might actually be its ceiling, which I'm at a loss to describe in words. It also features one of my beloved walk-up lecterns. As mentioned above, there are tons of great paintings and statues around the altar area, most of which you can hopefully make out in the pictures. There's a big Guadalupe image in the back.

I thoroughly enjoyed this sign

The organ in the church is in the front. You can see all of the organ pipes on either side of the altar, including the tiny ones that look sort of adorable sitting next to the more prominent ones. The balcony is more or less empty because of this, save for a bunch of seats and a rose window. This is the first time I can remember the steps up to a balcony being carpeted.

The stairs up to the balcony

The actual Mass I attended here was on a Friday evening at 6:30. The daily Masses here are in a chapel in the basement of the rectory. There was adoration going on as I came in, so I got to see my first Spanish-language benediction. There was certainly a language barrier, but I found it much easier to figure out what the priest was saying than during the other non-English Masses I've been to. I even understood part of the homily. As I've come to expect and enjoy during non-English Masses, the congregation did a lot more singing than you'd normally find at a daily Mass.

The chapel