Church #76 - St. Matthew, Cranston

There was a pretty good turnout (at least 30) for the Saturday morning Mass here a couple weeks ago. The church bells rang before Mass for what felt like an unnecessarily long time, but I had no problem with this since that's one of my favorite sounds in the world. I also love the idea of the neighbors having a little bit of church stuff in the background as they go about their days. The Mass was preceded by a rosary, with one unusually intense (and I mean that in the best possible way) male parishioner leading it from the front of the church.

The church has white walls, red carpet, and a high ceiling. The front of the church is a bit strange, but not in a bad way - there appear to be cry rooms on either side of the altar area, which I'm guessing used to serve different functions. There is also a little chapel behind the altar which is almost totally unfurnished, save for a couple of benches and a table with a bible on it. I've wondered before about exactly how much use rooms like this get, but at least they're lovely to look at.

One of the cry rooms, with the altar through the door

The chapel

The church also has lots of statues and icons, the kind of place where you keep seeing more of them that you missed as you spend more time looking around. I was happy to find that the balcony was open, up a delightfully tall and winding spiral staircase in the church's lobby.