Named Churches and Saints

[SkyLandSea]

Hi everyone.

I visited St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto, Canada this weekend. A beautiful cathedral with stunning art and architecture!

I went in expecting to find images of Michael the archangel everywhere, but I was surprised to find only one of him, a lovely painting at the rear of the church. However there was a proliferation of St. Marys, Annes, Peters, and others, as paintings, statues, everywhere. Michael has the rack of votive candles below it so he’s as venerable as the others, but I wondered why his presence is quite inconspicuous in a church named for him.

What is the traditional procedure for choosing the saint for a church to be named? I take from my experience that the selection of a saint doesn’t necessarily mean the Church will majorly venerate or house images of that particular saint?

 

[Joe_5859]

I don’t know the specific answer for the Church in question and there’s probably no single general answer to that question. It could be for many different reasons. Sometimes, shifting demographics bring new ethnic groups with their own sets of devotions and their own favorite saints. Sometimes a pastor might have his own favorites. Or perhaps a wealthy benefactor may want to donate a beautiful statue of their favorite saint.

 

[mfrances]

Catholic Churches almost always have a wide variety of saints displayed as statues, icon and stained glass windows, no matter who the particular parish’s patron saint is.

Having only 1 or 2 statues/depictions of the patron saint is the norm around here.

 

[Domnall]

There’s actually a logical answer to this, and it is located in every CAF member’s favorite document…the GIRM!

“Thus, in sacred buildings images of the Lord, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saints, in accordance with most ancient tradition of the Church, should be displayed for veneration by the faithful… There should usually be only one image of any given Saint.” GIRM 318

The rest of the paragraph talks about how the number of sacred imaged should not be increased “indiscriminately” as to not take away from the sacrifice of the Mass and all that stuff.

So, they’re just following the appropriate rules. I’m pretty sure that my parish at school and my home parish only have one statue of their saints (St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and St. Jude respectively) in the church building.