When Lee and I are traveling and come across a beautiful old Catholic church, we try and find the time to go in and light a candle for Lee’s grandmother. Although Anna is no longer with us on earth, I like to think she follows our travels and appreciates these little moments we send her way. In this case, I think she would really have loved seeing the church and personally it was the most amazing Catholic church I have ever been in.

It was difficult to capture the richness and depths of the mosaics and space, but we have done our best. The ceiling in particular was hard to get in pictures and the beautiful marble floors were as well. It was also huge, with a main room and two smaller wings both of which were available for people to pray in. Plus the outside was like a giant castle, and the entire church has heavy French influences. Let me just show you.

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Along with the beauty of the different areas the ceilings and walls were full of mosaic tiled pictures. I didn’t come close to capturing them all, but here are a few we got decent pictures of. The lighting was pretty low and the ceilings were very high so we did the best we could. In person it looks like shimmering gold.

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And sprinkled throughout there was sculpture. Some people might feel like it was overdone, but I actually really liked it. It’s such a large space, that it worked for me and it all blended well together.

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Despite the grandeur though, my favorite part was a small sculpture garden next to the house where the people live. The house looks small in comparison to the church but is actually quite large.

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The very best part was a small nook honoring Saint Philippine Duchesne. She came from France to the new world and started schools and orphanages for children. This memorial was erected by the Busch family and they built a bench where people could come and sit and talk to Phillipine. This area reminded me very much of Anna.

The next couple posts are largely museums, because the temperatures reached the mid-nineties and it was too hot to do much outside. Thankfully St. Louis has some pretty terrific museums.

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