Qualla: Galway Cathedral

Galway Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. It was built on the site of the city prison. The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas opened in Galway on 15 August 1965 - the feast of the Assumption - and was promptly called the last great stone cathedral to be built in Europe. President Eamon de Valera lit the sanctuary candle. Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston delivered the sermon, with the unanswerable title 'Why Build a Cathedral?' Four archbishops accompanied the Bishop of Galway, Michael Browne, at the altar. The building has not stopped dividing opinion since the day the prison was demolished to make way for it.

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY-SA 3.0

Galway Cathedral: The Pro-Cathedral It Replaced

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC BY-SA 4.0. A parish chapel went up around 1750 on Middle Street, at the corner of Lower Abbeygate Street, when penal-law restrictions on Catholic worship were finally relaxing. In 1821 the chapel was replaced with a limestone Gothic church dedicated to St Patrick. When the Diocese of Galway...

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Image: Sheila1988 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Galway Cathedral: John J. Robinson's Design

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit paddy (Patrick-Emil Zörner), CC BY-SA 3.0. The architect was John J. Robinson, who had previously designed many churches across Dublin and the country. The brief was traditional - Browne wanted neither Modernism nor a 1950s glass-and-steel essay. Robinson reached for the Renaissance: a Latin cross plan with a great centra...

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Image: paddy (Patrick-Emil Zörner) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Galway Cathedral: The Late Late Show, 1966

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Mendez from Malahide, Ireland, CC BY 2.0. Approval was not universal. Some local critics had wanted a contemporary 1960s design, the kind of soaring concrete-and-glass cathedral being built in Liverpool, Coventry, and Brasilia at the same period. The traditionalist choice provoked predictable cross-fire. The most notorio...

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Image: Miguel Mendez from Malahide, Ireland | CC BY 2.0

Galway Cathedral: Inside the Building

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. Past the heavy doors the cathedral opens out into a single vast space - a nave running west to east, a transept crossing under the central dome, the high altar at the eastern end backed by mosaic. The interior is lighter than the limestone exterior suggests, with stained glass in...

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Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Galway Cathedral: What the Building Holds

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit paddy (Patrick-Emil Zörner), CC BY-SA 3.0. Mass is said every day. Saturday vigil at six. Sundays at nine in Irish, then ten-thirty, twelve-thirty, and six in the evening. The rhythm of the place is fundamentally that of a working parish church on an unusual scale. The bishops buried within - Michael Browne who built it, ...

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Image: paddy (Patrick-Emil Zörner) | CC BY-SA 3.0