Port Elizabeth has two beautiful cathedrals literally a couple of hundred meters away from each other in the city centre. The one is the St Mary's Anglican Cathedral while the second (in picture) is St Augustine's Catholic Cathedral.
When the first Catholic priest set foot in Port Elizabeth in 1840 (after being
shipwrecked in Cape St Francis and having to travel the last 100km to town on
horseback), there were only 42 Catholics in the town. In the coming years the
Catholic community grew and flourished and in 1861 construction started on St
Augustine's on land purchased on Castle Hill. The project took place under the
watchful eye of Father Thomas Murphy. St.Augustine’s was opened and solemnly
consecrated by Bishop Moran on the 25th of April 1866. The bronze statue of
Christ the King which can be seen above the door was donated by the Frost family
in 1931.
Click here to read the whole history of St Augustine's.
This is the parish of my family, the Byrons, of Scots-Irish decent. A beautiful building, also very nearly victim of resident arsonist Mary Livingstone Johnstone's 1895 spate of conflagrations that saw St. Mary's redesigned as we know it today. Luckily the priest was onto her and the chrch was saved.
ReplyDeleteHow about a view shots of the interior?