150 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

  176 Preston, England. St Walburge: Get your exorcised salt here! Preston is an industrial town just up the road from where I was brought up in Lancashire GB. The two main features of this Catholic church is its extremely pointy tower (tallest spire of any parish church in England), and the fact that exorcised salt is available. This last is pretty rare: in fact I had never heard of it. Blessing and exorcising salt was a part of a traditional Roman rite ceremony, and of course salt is easy to carry around and sprinkle where one might need the devil to be kicked out of. I see that if you write to the Pious Union of St Joseph, in the US, you can buy this salt very cheaply, and “ you can sprinkle in your cooking or around the home for spiritual protection”. The blessing of the salt is a minor exorcism. To get back to the (19th century Gothic revival) church, it was built with the profits from the huge textile industry. This is  a pretty traditionalist church, as we can see from ...

I really liked this early twentieth century brick church. In particular, there are some of my all-time favourite Stations of the Cross, a fine cross in empty space, and an altar table, lectern and tabernacle in quietly decorative style. The baptismal font and some of the crucifixes are also worth the trip. The organ has many pipes. The church was built in 1909 and opened in 1910, named after the local neighbourhood. It looks very contemplative, but apparently the bloody shirt of a young Catholic working man, who had been killed in an attack on a Catholic procession, was buried in the foundations of the building.