Church #86 - St. Robert Bellarmine, Johnston

This church is on the small side, with the altar stuck way out in the middle of the sanctuary and surrounded by pews on all four sides. It's very colorful due to its red and blue tinted windows. Its tabernacle is in a little side chapel room with a prayer intention book. There's tons of seating up in the balcony, including a big cry room, presumably to make up for the relatively small main floor. The parish seems pretty active based on its bulletin and the amount of groups and events advertised in the back.

St. Robert Bellarmine is one of the many, many well known saints that I know almost nothing about. He was an Italian Jesuit and Cardinal in the 16th and 17th centuries. He was a very important intellectual figure in his day, to the point of being named a Doctor of the Church, including involvement with Galileo and all the controversy surrounding him.

Church #85 - Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, North Providence

I remember this church from my April walking tour. I was here about an hour before the start of Mass, with almost nobody around, and it was a wonderful place to sit and pray for a few minutes. The stained glass windows make the interior very colorful.

I came back for the 10am Mass yesterday. The organist played beautifully before Mass as people were coming in, setting a very prayerful tone. The Mass featured a choir in the balcony who I thought did a great job, especially with the psalm. Someone rings the church's bells at the moment of the consecration, broadcasting what's happening to the surrounding neighborhood. I remember St. Anthony in North Providence, which shares a parish with this church, doing the same thing when I was there earlier this year.

Church #84 - Holy Ghost, Tiverton

This is a very distinctive church, for the obvious reason that they use a front-facing altar and a communion rail for their liturgies, and the priest celebrates the Liturgy of the Eucharist with his back to the congregation. I know I'm wading into dangerous territory here, but I did enjoy my experience here a lot. I don't think that this is the only "correct" way to do the Mass or anything like that, but I do think that there's something beautiful and reverent about having everyone facing forward towards the tabernacle, instead of facing each other.

There was nobody in the main church when I visited. It's modern, peaceful and beautiful, with a handful of enormous stained glass windows. They have a relatively rare Padro Pio statue in the sanctuary, and a Lighthouse Media stand in the entryway.

The Mass I went to was on a Saturday morning, on the feast of Sts. Cosmos and Damian. It was my first experience using a communion rail, and seeing a consecration with the priest's back turned. The congregation said the St. Michael prayer at the end. The Mass also featured my favorite altar server tandem ever: two brothers, one of them roughly twice the height of the other, and both about as reverent as I've ever seen.

The parish center with the daily Mass chapel

The chapel

Church #83 - Our Lady of the Rosary, Providence

I walked here a few Fridays ago for an evening Mass. The congregation consisted of me and five older Hispanic women. While attending Mass in a foreign language is cool in a way, it definitely makes me feel sorry for people who move to a new country and are forced to attend Mass in a language they don't know; you certainly do lose something in the process. The Mass was in a little chapel inside a former convent in the parish's compound.

The daily Mass chapel

The first thing I noticed when I visited the main church was a bunch of people hanging around in the back for no apparent reason. I felt dumb afterward, but it took me a couple minutes to realize that it was a confession line. There was quite a long line by the time I left, with people of all ages, which is awesome to see in a parish.

The church has a high ceiling and some great paintings in the altar area and above the side pews. There's a Fatima shrine in the front. The pews are old school, but they've gotten rid of the partitions that split each pew in half. There's a spectacular stained glass window, one of the best I've seen, in the balcony in the back.

The coolest and most unique part of the church is the Lourdes grotto room in the back, off the entry area when you first come in. It's certainly fitting for a church with a name like this.

The Lourdes room

Church #82 - St. Anthony, Pawtucket

This is an attractive little church with a white exterior in Pawtucket, one of a cluster of Pawtucket churches within easy walking distance of each other. I took a long walk here on the beautiful, high 60s afternoon that we had yesterday.

The church's interior is small. As I've come to expect from Portuguese churches, there are tons of statues and little shrine areas at the front. There's one particularly great stained glass window above the altar, and a nice rose window in the back. The tabernacle is kept off to the side. There's also a relic on the altar, but I never got a chance to ask where it's from. I was happy to find the main church open, without Mass in the rectory like at a lot of urban parishes.

The Mass was in Portuguese, which I knew going in. I've done this long enough that I'm kind of used to not having the Mass in English by now. I continued my usual practice of awkwardly mumbling the prayers and responses under my breath, since I'm worried it will distract the people around me if I'm louder. You can tell the priest is a good speaker, though of course I have no idea what he was saying. As I've come to expect from non-English Masses, the mass took longer than usual, and there were a couple of songs. There was also a long sign of peace featuring lots of European-style kissing on the cheek, which I thankfully didn't have to partake in.

Church #81 - Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Providence

I walked here for a Sunday morning Mass last week. This church is on Atwells Ave., somewhat set back from the main street, so it actually took me a while after I moved to Rhode Island to notice that it was there. It shares a parish with Holy Ghost down the street.

This is yet another beautiful old Rhode Island church. The inside is dominated by the wonderful bright blue windows behind the altar, with a huge picture of Our Lady between them. Other interior details include, oddly enough, two baptismal fonts. There's a very cool-looking baptismal font chapel off to one side of the altar area, which unfortunately has been damaged by leaks. The balcony is open and used by the parish's music minister, but I didn't get a chance to get a closer look at its rose window.