Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica ( or ), officially Basilica of Our Lady of The Immaculate Conception is a cathedral

Cathedral

A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

located in the downtown of Saigon City, Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

. Established by French colonists, the cathedral was constructed between 1863 and 1880. It has two bell towers, reaching a height of 58 meters (190 feet).

History

Following the French conquest of Cochinchina

Cochinchina

Cochinchina is a region encompassing the southern third of Vietnam whose principal city is Saigon. It was a French colony from 1862 to 1954. The later state of South Vietnam was created in 1954 by combining Cochinchina with southern Annam. In Vietnamese, the region is called Nam Bộ...

and Saigon, the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

established a community and religious services for French colonialists. The first church was built on today's Ngo Duc Ke Street. There had been a Vietnamese pagoda, which had been abandoned during the war. Bishop Lefevre decided to make this pagoda a church.

The first church was too small. Thus, in 1863, Admiral Bonard decided to build a wooden church on the bank of Charner canal (Kinh Lớn). Lefevre put the first stone for construction of the church on 28 March 1863. The construction was completed two years later and was called "Saigon Church". When the wooden church was damaged by termites, all church services were held in the guest-chamber of the French Governor's Palace. This palace would later be turned into a seminary until the Notre-Dame Cathedral was completed.

After the design competition, bids were accepted for construction. Again, J. Bourad was the successful bidder and became supervisor of constructions.

Originally, there were three proposed sites for construction:

On the site of the former test school (today, this is at the corner of Le Duan Boulevard and Hai Ba Trung Street).
At Kinh Lon (today it is Nguyễn Huệ Boulevard)
At the present site where the cathedral is situated.

All building materials were imported from France. The outside wall of the cathedral was built with bricks from Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

. Although the contractor did not use coated concrete, these bricks have retained their bright red color until today.

On 7 October 1877, Bishop Isidore Colombert laid the first stone in an inaugural ceremony. The construction of the cathedral took three years. On Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

Day, 11 April 1880, a blessing ceremony and ceremony of completion were solemnly organized in presence of the Governor of Cochinchina Charles Le Myre de Vilers

Charles Le Myre de Vilers

Charles Le Myre de Vilers was governor of Cochinchina and resident-general of Madagascar . He was a member of the French National Assembly from 1889 to 1902 ....

. One can see the granite plate inside the main entry gate commemorating the start and completion dates and designer. The total cost was 2,500,000 French francs (at that time price). At the beginning, the cathedral was called State Cathedral due to source of the construction cost.

In 1895, two bell towers were added to the cathedral, each 57.6 m high with six bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

bells

Church bell

A church bell is a bell which is rung in a church either to signify the hour or the time for worshippers to go to church, perhaps to attend a wedding, funeral, or other service...

with the total weight of 28.85 metric tonnes. The crosses were installed on the top of each tower of 3.5 m high, 2 m wide, 600 kg in weight. The total height of the cathedral to the top of the Cross is 60.5 m.

In the flower garden in front of the cathedral, there was a bronze statue of Pigneau de Behaine

Pigneau de Behaine

Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau , commonly known as Pigneau de Béhaine, also Pierre Pigneaux and Bá Đa Lộc , was a French Catholic priest best known for his role in assisting Nguyễn Ánh to establish the Nguyễn Dynasty in Vietnam after the Tây Sơn...

(also called Bishop of Adran) leading Prince Cảnh

Nguyen Phuc Canh

Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh Nguyễn Phúc Cảnh (1780–1801, also known as Prince Cảnh, was the eldest son of the Vietnamese Prince Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, the future Emperor Gia Long. At the age of seven, he famously visited France with the French Catholic Father Pigneau de Béhaine to sign an alliance...

, the son of Emperor Gia Long

Gia Long

Emperor Gia Long , born Nguyễn Phúc Ánh , was an emperor of Vietnam...

by his right hand. The statue was made in France. In 1945, the statue was removed, but the foundation remains.

In 1959, Bishop Joseph Pham Van Thien, whose jurisdiction included Saigon parish

Parish

A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

, attended the Holy Mother Congress held in Vatican

Vatican City

Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...

and ordered a Peaceful Notre Dame statue made with granite in Rome. When the statue arrived in Saigon on 16 February 1959, Bishop Pham Van Thien held a ceremony to install the statue on the empty base and presented the title of "Regina Pacis". It was the same bishop who wrote the prayers "Notre-Dame bless the peace to Vietnam". The next day, Cardinal Aganianian came from Rome to chair the closing ceremony of the Holy Mother Congress and solemnly chaired the ceremony for the statue, thus the cathedral was then-on called Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The Statue's Tears

During October 2005, the statue was reported to have shed tears, attracting thousands of people and forcing authorities to stop traffic around the Cathedral. However, the top clergy of the Catholic Church in Vietnam confirmed that the Virgin Mary statue in front of a cathedral did not shed tears, which nevertheless failed to disperse the crowd flocking to the statue days after the incident. The reported 'tear' flowed down the right cheek of the face of the statue.

Status as a Basilica

In 1960, the Vatican

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

founded Roman Catholic diocese

Diocese

A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...

s in Vietnam and assigned archbishops to Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

, Huế

Hue

Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...

and Saigon. The cathedral was titled Saigon Chief Cathedral. In 1962, Vatican anointed the Saigon Chief Cathedral, conferred it basilique. From this time, this cathedral was called Saigon Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica.

Special characteristics

All the original building materials were imported from France. Tiles have been carved with the words Guichard Carvin, Marseille St André France (perhaps stating the locality where the tiles were produced). Some tiles are carved with the words "Wang-Tai Saigon". Many tiles have since been made in Saigon City to replace the tiles that were damaged by the war. There are 56 glass squares supplied by the Lorin firm of Chartres

Chartres

Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...

province in France. The cathedral foundation was designed to bear ten times the weight of the cathedral.

History

The Statue's Tears

Status as a Basilica

Special characteristics

See also