Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle
The parish of Saint Matthew was founded in 1840, when the capital was still a small town. Its present church, designed by C. Grant LaFarge in a Romanesque style with a great copper dome, was built between 1893 and 1913. When the Archdiocese of Washington was created in 1939, Saint Matthew’s became its cathedral.
Inside, the red-brick exterior gives way to marble and rich mosaics. A tall mosaic of Saint Matthew, patron of civil servants, fills the wall above the altar, fitting for a city of government workers. Since 1953 the Red Mass for judges and lawyers has been celebrated here each October, on the Sunday before the Supreme Court term begins.
On 25 November 1963 the funeral Mass of President John F. Kennedy was celebrated here, and a marble inscription in front of the altar marks where his coffin lay. Pope Saint John Paul II celebrated Mass here in 1979, and Pope Francis met the American bishops here in 2015.
- Built
- 1893–1913
- Style
- Romanesque and Byzantine Revival
- Where
- Washington, District of Columbia, United States
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap
- Read about
- Saint Matthew