Visit to the Oratory of St. Joseph
From Kahnawake, our pilgrimage took us to the Oratory of St. Joseph , Mount Royal in Montreal. I had had a sneak preview the weekend previous whilst visiting my sisters in Montreal and visited the small chapel of Frere Andre. Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and national shrine on the west slope of Mount Royal in Montreal. In 1904, Saint André Bessette, a brother from the Congregation of the Holy Cross, began the construction of St. Joseph, a small chapel on the slopes of Mont Royal near Notre Dame College. Soon the growing number of visitors made it too small. In 1917 a larger church was completed that has a seating capacity of 1,000. In 1924, the construction of the basilica of Saint Joseph's Oratory was inaugurated; it was finally completed in 1967. Father Paul Bellot, an architect, completed the dome of Saint Joseph's Oratory (1937-39). The Oratory's dome is the third-largest of its kind in the world after the Basilica o...