150 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

Breathtaking huge oblong box with pillars. One of the four papal basilicas in Rome. Altar canopy, thrones and all the gilded decoration and heroic storytelling one could dream of. It is the largest of the zillion churches dedicated to Mary in Rome, and It has exceptional relics, like fragments of baby Jesus’s crib,  they say. It  was begun in the fifth century, to celebrate the church’s decision (at Ephesus in Turkey) that Mary should be called “Mother of God” (supporters of “mother of Christ” were roundly defeated), and was gradually enlarged in later centuries. Magnificent fifth century mosaics show episodes from Mary’s life, ending up with her getting crowned in heaven, and parallel stories from the Old Testament (Red Sea division trick etc) The sixteenth century Sistine chapel (another one) depicts scenes such as Mary visiting her sister, angels appearing to Joseph in a dream etc Pope Francis is buried in the basilica, and many previous popes can boast magnificent funerary...

We are in the South West of France, somewhat nearer culturally to Toulouse than to Bordeaux, in what is now the suburbs of Agen (From the Quatre feux go straight on, going away from the gravier, and after the market, take that road going past the Ecole Normale). This was actually the church which my wife attended when she was a child, and at one time my Mother-in-law Teresa Antoinetta sang in the choir. This was some time after the first church on the site had been built, at the very beginning of the 17th century. In the 16th century the village was already a place of pilgrimage in honour of the virgin Mary, after the 1510 discovery of a wooden statue of her with allegedly special powers. The present basilica was completed in the 1850s, but bits of the earlier chapel are still there. Nicely coloured pillars and stained glass.