Blog

by Jill Carlson, Class of 2013

Churches By Bus, a popular annual tour, will take place next Saturday, September 23. Several busloads of enthusiastic guests will visit churches in the city to learn their remarkable histories and appreciate their incredible architecture. Dave Utech gives us special insight into one particular tour that offers a different view of Churches By Bus in this memorable Short Tale.

CHURCHES BY BUS

My assignment for a Churches By Bus tour was the Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows, on West Jackson Boulevard. My partner was Polly Sippy, and we planned how we would divide a busload of guests and give them the full story of this wonderful edifice (constructed 1890-1892, designed by Engelbert, Pope & Brinkmann)

But when we arrived at the basilica, we discovered the streets were full of parked cars and a hearse was parked near the entrance. I soon learned that a funeral was in progress, the church was filled with hundreds of mourners, and the deceased was the beloved catechist from Our Lady of Sorrows. The funeral director estimated the service would go on for at least the next 45 minutes. And then the first bus arrived.

Polly and I each took about 25 guests and we did thorough presentations about the history of the parish (its western boundary was the Mississippi River originally), and the changing ethnic makeup of the neighborhood. We walked around the building to admire the Italian Renaissance Revival architecture. We talked about how one of the bell towers had been lost in a lightning strike. And we described how the church was designated a basilica by Pope Pius XII.

Suddenly the front doors opened and the mourners began leaving. Polly and I quickly took our groups inside through a side door and spent the remaining few  minutes discussing the stunning interior features before the guests needed to board the bus and start on their way to the next stop on the tour. We took a few minutes to catch our breath, and the second bus arrived.

As we took our groups inside, we found the organist had remained after the funeral so he could practice for a concert to be held the following day. So our presentations of the interior were limited to pointing and gesturing, while Bach and Handel reverberated off the walls.

Our third busload of guests came soon, and when we walked inside we encountered a baptismal party. Fortunately the group was small and the basilica is enormous, so we could manage to present the interior without too much difficulty.

A wedding rehearsal began as we brought our fourth busload of guests inside, so this was yet another obstacle to our presentations.

When the fifth group of guests arrived, a quinceanera ceremony got underway in one of the side chapels. The 15-year old honoree was beautiful in her full dress, escorted by family and friends.

As Polly and I debriefed with Chuck Fiori, the tour director, he assured us that he had asked church staff not to schedule anything during the tour hours. But he also smiled with a shrug and said, “Don’t you just hate it when these churches actually do churchy things?” All the extra distractions had actually made the basilica come alive to our guests, and it was a clear illustration of the church as a living entity. 

Polly and I agreed that we had earned “Flexible” as our docent middle name that day.