Holy Name hopes for August re-opening

Scaffolding crisscrosses Holy Name Cathedral, all the way up its 70-foot-tall vaulted ceiling, where construction workers are repairing portions of the intricate, wooden roof, replacing water-soaked columns and assessing damage following the church’s fire in February.

In the meantime, the historic, 134-year-old downtown church—the seat of the Chicago’s archbishop Cardinal Francis George—has been forced to hold services in the building next door. 

But the cathedral’s pastor, Father Dan Mayall, said the repairs should be completed in time for a reopening on Aug. 1, six months after its roof caught fire on Feb. 4.  The fire department has yet to identify the cause of the blaze.

Today, I walked through the under-construction cathedral with Father Mayall (as well as my religion reporting instructor Manya Brachear, from the Chicago Tribune, and fellow student-journalist Joe Freeman).

There was something especially mysterious about the place, having to weave your way through the metal pipes and try to find a peek of what you know is there behind the construction clutter: a crucifix, a window, an organ. 

I thought there had to be some takeaway from seeing this historic cathedral, a landmark and symbol of Catholicism for so many Chicagoans, stripped of its rows of pews, covered in dust, full of plywood and platforms, and gently humming with the sound of power generators and other machines I didn’t recognize.

Sometimes the glory of God, or simply a feeling of peace and presence, comes right to me.  It shines through the stained glass in a beautiful building like Holy Name.  It immediately humbles me, as I look up and realize how small I really am in such a huge and majestic place.  But when that space is cluttered, noisy, dirty… it doesn’t come as easily. I’m forced to look for it.  And there’s something exciting in that search.

When I asked Father Mayall, he offered a perspective on faith during the building’s unfortunate past (it also had to undergo repairs on its ceiling last year) that some parishioners had brought up:  “The gift of faith is a give you got at the time you were baptized.  That’s what we believe,” he said.  “Those are the essentials, and that’s what lasts.”

I snapped some pictures on my iPhone, but the Chicago Tribune’s got a much more impressive photo gallery of Holy Name’s insides, taken about a month ago.