100 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

  Everybody’s heard of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception or our Lady of Sorrows    etc, but at first sight the name of this church appears to be Our Lady of the Railway Station, which is … original. If I understand correctly, in fact the “gare” referred to is the river port which was at the centre of this neighbourhood for a very long time. This is a mid-nineteenth century church. According to a plaque you will see below, it was founded by a priest, Abbé Parguel, who was “a father to the poor, and was poor himself”. He is buried in the church. There is a fine Pietà and some other things to see. One plaque commemorates the celebration of a mass in 1939 in the church by three “native bishops” from Uganda, Madagascar and India. The plaque shows both the colonialist attitudes of the time (“native” bishops!) but also the desire at the time to declare that people from all countries were equal before God. I am told the church dates from a time when medieval architecture was ...

This is the largest church in Reykjavik the capital of Iceland. Not apparently a cathedral, just a parish church. It is rather spectacular on the outside, but in the inside not ornate, as Lutheranism does not really go in for ornate. Beautiful modern pulpit though. In front of the church is a statue of Leik Erikson, the first European to explore America, sometime back in the tenth century.  Information in English Information in Norwegian