Basilica of Our Lady of Heliopolis
The Basilica of Our Lady of Heliopolis is a Roman Catholic church and is located on El-Ahram Square in the Heliopolis district in the northeast of the Egyptian capital Cairo . The church follows the Latin rite and belongs to the Apostolic Vicariate of Alexandria in Egypt .
Church building
In 1906, Édouard Louis Joseph Empain , a Belgian entrepreneur, had the new Heliopolis district built. In 1910 he laid the foundation stone for the Church of Our Lady , which has references to Hagia Sophia . In 1914 he had an organ with 1470 pipes from Belgium installed, which was first played by Peter Van de Velde. This instrument, which is very rare in Egypt, was restored from 2000 to 2010 by a group of volunteers under Gerard Pels. Édouard Louis Joseph Empain is buried under the basilica.
use
In the 1920s, the church was the cathedral of the later Apostolic Vicariate of Heliopolis in Egypt , founded in 1886 as the Apostolic Prefecture of the Nile Delta , and from 1929 co- cathedral . Because of the falling number of believers, the Apostolic Vicariate Heliopolis in Egypt was re-attached to the Apostolic Vicariate Alexandria in Egypt on November 30, 1987 . The Church retained the status as one of now two concathedrals of the Vicariate. On April 6, 1993 Pope John Paul II elevated the church to the rank of minor basilica .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Basilique Notre Dame de Fatima d'Héliopolis on gcatholic.org
- ↑ Celebrating the centenary of the Basilica of Heliopolis and the restoration of its rare pipe organ on ahram.org.eg
Coordinates: 30 ° 5 ′ 37 ″ N , 31 ° 19 ′ 30.7 ″ E