Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral or in full Mary, Queen of the World and St. James the Great Cathedral is a minor basilica in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal. It is the third largest church in Quebec after Saint Joseph's Oratory (also in Montreal) and the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré east of Quebec City. The building is 101 m (333 ft) in length, 46 m (150 ft) in width, and a maximum height of 77 m (252 ft) at the cupola, the diameter of which is 23 m (75 ft).
The church is located at 1085 Cathedral Street at the corner of René Lévesque Boulevard and Metcalfe Street, near the Bonaventure metro station and Central Station in downtown Montreal. It and the connected Archdiocese main buildings form the eastern side of Place du Canada, and occupies a dominant presence on Dorchester Square.
History
The construction of the cathedral was ordered by Mgr. Ignace Bourget, second bishop of Montreal, to replace the former Saint-Jacques Cathedral which had burned in 1852. His choice to create a scale model of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome was in response to a rivalry with the Sulpician order who had been the feudal seigneurs of Montreal, and with the Anglican Church, both of which favoured the Neo-Gothic style instead. The site also sparked controversy due to its location in the western part of downtown, in a then predominantly English neighbourhood far from the homes of the French-Canadian church-goers.
The first architect, Victor Bourgeau, refused the project after studying St. Peter's, saying that it could not be reproduced on a smaller scale. At the time, the Holy See and the Papal States were threatened by the nationalist troops of Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont, who was attempting to assert control over all Italy. The undeterred bishop Bourget reacted to these events by sending a total of 507 Canadian Zouaves to defend the Papal territories in Italy, whose names are engraved in gold letters on the marble slabs in the cathedral. Their motto is: "Love God and go your way." A painting depicting Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves, was made in 1885 by Lionel Royer. Fr. Joseph Michaud, the chaplain of the Papal Zouave volunteers of Montreal, was sent to Rome to secretly produce a scale model to work from.
Work began in 1875 and the new church was consecrated in 1894 as Saint James Cathedral, after Saint James the Great, the patron of the parish the church served. At the time it was the largest church in Quebec. It was made a minor basilica in 1919 by Pope Benedict XV. It was rededicated in 1955 to Mary, Queen of the World, by Pope Pius XII at the request of cardinal Paul-Émile Léger. (The pope had proclaimed this title for Mary in his 1954 encyclical Ad caeli reginam.)
Between 1955 and 1960, several restoration works were executed. On March 28, 2000, the cathedral was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.
, the cathedral's esplanade and narthex have undergone significant reconstruction. The exterior statue of Bishop Ignace Bourget was cleaned and restored in 2005.
Design
Chapels
Baptistery
A small chapel is dedicated to baptism ceremonies. The marble baptismal font is mounted on a stucco crucifix sculpted by Louis-Philippe Hébert.
Bishops' mortuary chapel
The burial chapel, completed in 1933, is located on the east wall of the building, east of the nave, halfway between the main entrance and the altar in the centre. The tomb of Mgr. Bourget, an art work which was created in Rome, is located in the centre. The remains of the bishop that lay in a crypt under one of the pillars in the cathedral were transferred to his tomb on April 27, 1933. The titular bishops are buried on the west side and the auxiliary bishops on the east-hand side.
The walls and floors are made of marble imported from Italy and feature several mosaics. The bronze plaque above the altar depicts St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Since the cathedral was running out of space for burying auxiliary bishops, a second chapel was built next to the original one in 2005. Here an additional 15 vaults have been prepared.