Our Lady of Victory Basilica
Father Nelson Baker, a Civil War veteran and businessman turned priest, spent more than fifty years in Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, caring for orphans, homeless boys, unwed mothers and abandoned infants, the sick and the poor. He built an orphanage, a home for infants, a hospital and a school, and raised the money through a national association of devotion to Our Lady of Victory.
As his crowning work he built a shrine in her honour, completed in 1926. It is a white marble church in the Italian Renaissance style with a great copper dome and twin towers, filled with marble, mosaics and some 1,500 angels carved and painted throughout. Pope Pius XI made it a minor basilica the same year. It was only the second church in the United States to receive that title.
Father Baker died in 1936, and his tomb is in the basilica. In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI declared him Venerable. His works of charity continue as the Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity.
- Built
- 1921–1926
- Style
- Italian Renaissance Revival
- Where
- Lackawanna, New York, United States
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap
- Read about
- The Blessed Virgin Mary