I really enjoyed visiting this parish, and it's definitely one of my favorites that I've seen. It's wonderfully diverse, with several different communities and languages coming in and out every week. It has several weekend Masses in English and Spanish, and also supports Hmong (from Southeast Asia) and Haitian communities. The main church is huge and old school, and there is a lower church in the basement that gets a lot of use. It used to be a big, standard-looking lower church, but it has been renovated and split into a social room and a smaller, more informal space for Masses.
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| The lower church |
I've walked to this church several times in the middle of the day, and I was really looking forward to seeing the interior. It's obviously big from the outside, and a very striking sight in the middle of its South Providence neighborhood. It looks exactly as I'd hoped, with tons of space, high ceilings, and beautiful art. The stained glass windows and stations are enormous. There's scaffolding in the front right now, as the parish is restoring some of the windows. There's a big band area in the front for the 11am Spanish Mass, and as I was leaving I saw choir members in robes coming out to get ready with the musicians.
I came to Mass here on a weekday evening. The Mass was in Spanish, in the small St. Martin de Porres chapel in the rectory. I was relieved that a woman got there at the same time as me, so I didn't have to awkwardly figure out how to get in. The room was completely filled, pretty much entirely with old women, and I was forced to sit right in the front. As always, the Mass featured lots of singing in Spanish.
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