As Notre Dame burned in the heart of Paris, the news reached one of its sister cathedrals more than 5,000 miles away.
“We have the exact same architectural feature on our building that’s seen from miles and miles around the city,” the Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral, said. “It symbolizes our longing for transcendence.”
Every cathedral is connected in a loose network, Young said. And those built in the Gothic style for which Notre Dame is known — including the National Cathedral in Washington and St. John’s in New York, which was forced to offer its Palm Sunday services outside when a basement fire erupted this past weekend — are bound in a sisterhood.
Their lavish designs make them impossible to ignore, and their roots typically intertwine with the history of their respective cities. Though they aren’t uniform in appearance, they mirror each other in stature.Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is a sister cathedral to Paris' Notre Dame. Sunday marked the start of Holy Week, the holiest days of the year in Christianity, which culminates in the celebration of Easter Sunday. It was impossible to ignore the weight of time as onlookers watchedInvestigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire. But Notre Dame’s 850-year-old design may have aided the flames that nearly destroyed it.
Victor Hugo once described the cathedral as a “vast symphony in stone.” It’s also a structure made of timber and open spaces that lacks proper fire protections — a combination that experts saySan Francisco’s Grace Cathedral is reinforced by steel, a lesson learned after the first church was destroyed. Still, Young is constantly aware of the possibility of its destruction.Grace Cathedral will have a service Wednesday that will include prayers for Notre Dame and the people of Paris.
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