Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Cathedrals of Canada - 3. Amos

Recent controversy in the Church in Ireland has focused on the amalgamation of small dioceses but few Irish dioceses are as small as the diocese of Amos, established in 1938 from a portion of the territory of what had been since 1919 the diocese of Haileybury and was to become in 1978 the diocese of Timmins.

Timmins itself has only 48,000 Catholics out of 88,000 souls. On the other hand the diocese of Amos has something in common with many Irish dioceses in that of the 98,000 souls 93% of them are Catholics, a proportion that isn't extraordinarily high for Québec. Although the population of Amos is not large the size of the territory is vast, larger than the rest of the dioceses of Québec put together, including the Nunavik territory.

The Cathedral of the diocese of Amos is dedicated to St. Therese, 'the Little Flower' and has another unique distinction of being the only Romano-Byzantine Cathedral in North America. Built in 1922-3 to the designs of the great Montréalais (church) architect Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne (1876-1950), it is a basilica upon a circular plan with only a practical nod to a cruciform plan.

It sits on a prominent hill within cathedral park, on the east bank of the River Harricana, presiding over the city and visible from almost every point

The construction of the cathedral, in contrast to its historical style, is of modern steel and reinforced concrete, quite a novel construction method for the time. The dome measures 30.48 meters in diameter, was at the time of its construction, the largest reinforced concrete dome in Quebec but was exceeded by the dome of St. Joseph's Oratory in Montréal in 1937 (35.05 meters in diameter) and was the largest self-supporting dome of its kind in North America at the time. The cathedral rises to 49 meters to the dome.

The Cathedral retains its altar rails but unfortunately the tabernacle has been taken to one side and the bishop's throne now sits in the central position in the apse behind an altar brought to the edge of the step so that Mass cannot be celebrated 'ad orientem'.

The diocese has a wonderful 360 degree view of the interior available here and the details of the inventory of places of worship can be found here.

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