Archbishop Conti on the rebirth of Glasgow’s St Andrew’s Cathedral

HERALD SCOTLAND
April 11, 2011

UNITED KINGDOM - Glasgow’s first post-Reformation Catholic church, on the banks of the River Clyde, has gone from gloomy to glorious. Its soaring fluted stone pillars and arches have been carefully reworked in imitation ashlar to look like sandstone, their elegant sweeps highlighted in glorious 32.5-carat gold leaf, and with blue, white and green decorative paintwork. Rib-vaulted ceilings and decorative boss caps have also been painted to bring out previously unseen biblical motifs, in colours that echo the original 19th-century stained glass, now restored, that sits in the gothic revival windows behind the new white marble altar and above the original stone statues of Saint Andrew and Saint Patrick. After being under wraps for a two-year, £4.5m restoration, St Andrew’s Cathedral will reopen to parishioners and visitors in its spectacular new guise on Monday, following the return today of the cathedra (the bishop’s chair) and the rededication of the new altar, designed by Archbishop Conti himself, and a mass of consecration on Sunday afternoon. The funding has come from a variety of sources, including parishioners’ contributions via the Cathedral Renovation Fund, the Faith Into Action fundraising programme, a private bequest and publicly funded bodies. [link]