Qualla: Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. The dome went up first. Engineers at Clancy & Theys assembled the 162-ton copper-clad ribbed structure on the ground in west Raleigh, then crane-lifted it into place atop the still-rising sanctuary walls. From its finial it stood 173 feet above the ground. Underneath, two thousand seats waited. When Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral was dedicated on July 26, 2017, it became the fifth-largest Catholic cathedral in the United States, a Romanesque Revival vessel for the half a million Catholics of eastern North Carolina who had outgrown their previous cathedral six times over.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral: From Orphanage to Cathedral Campus

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1899, Father Thomas Frederick Price and his sister, Sister Mary Agnes of the Sisters of Mercy, founded a Catholic orphanage on land Father Price had purchased at the edge of Raleigh. The Nazareth Orphanage served boys first, then girls; in the early 1950s, Bishop Vincent Water...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral: Forty-Six Million Dollars and a Roman Plan

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. Designed by the architecture firm O'Brien & Keane of Arlington, Virginia, and built by Clancy & Theys of Raleigh, the cathedral cost $46 million. Construction began with a January 3, 2015 groundbreaking. The plan is cruciform, oriented east-west in keeping with Catholic tradition...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral: Salvaged Windows, a Pope's Blessing, and the Diamond Motif

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. Many of the stained-glass windows came from a closed Philadelphia parish, the Church of the Ascension of Our Lord. Originally designed by Paula Balano, they were restored by Beyer Studios and reinstalled in Raleigh, where smaller windows that once flanked larger ones at the clere...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral: Marble, Saints, and a Tabernacle Like a Tiny Cathedral

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside, the sanctuary sits beneath the dome. The altar, ambo, and cathedra are carved Bianco Carrara C marble with Giallo Siena marble accents. The baptismal font, six feet across, rests on an octagonal pattern of Bardiglio Nuvolato marble laid so the natural veins appear to radi...

Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0