Hai Phong Cathedral

In the middle of the port city of Hải Phòng stands a building that makes many first-time passersby stop and look. Its square bell tower rises 28 meters, with a pointed roof and windows of bright colored glass. A European Gothic church holds its ground beside modern buildings.

This is Hải Phòng Cathedral, known more fully as the Cathedral of the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.

It stands on Hoàng Văn Thụ Street, in Hồng Bàng ward. As a cathedral, it is the center of the Hải Phòng Diocese. The diocese serves the Catholic community of Hải Phòng and Quảng Ninh. It also reaches into part of the old Hải Dương province, now also part of Hải Phòng.

The people who built it were not French, a point many visitors get wrong. They were Spanish missionary priests of the Dominican Order. Saint Dominic Guzman founded the order in 1216. Spanish Dominican missionaries had worked in northern Vietnam since the 17th century, long before the French arrived there. The church was built in the European Gothic style and finished in the early 20th century or earlier.

The church is 47 meters long and 17 meters wide. But the most unusual thing about it is not its size. Inside the church there is not a single supporting column. The whole space is open, and it can hold nearly 900 people at one Mass. This is an achievement of Gothic engineering. Here, a system of pointed vaults and thick load-bearing walls carries the weight in place of columns.

Gothic architecture aims higher than simply putting up a building. The vaults are high, the windows are wide, and natural light passes through panes of many colors. All of it is designed so that a person stepping inside feels lifted from the ground and turned upward. This is the "sermon in light" that Gothic craftsmen in 12th century Europe created.

The church's name is tied to a special tradition of the Dominican Order. Mân Côi is the Vietnamese word for the Rosary, the Catholic prayer beads dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Dominicans have honored Our Lady of the Rosary in a special way since Saint Dominic founded the order. For that reason, many churches the Dominicans built in Vietnam carry the title of the Rosary. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary falls on October 7 each year. It is also the patron feast day of this church, and it is celebrated with great solemnity.

One detail inside the church is easy to miss. At the foot of the Throne of Jesus in the sanctuary lie the graves of three bishops of the Hải Phòng Diocese. Bishop Giuse Trương Cao Đại died in 1969. Bishop Phêrô Maria Khuất Văn Tạo died in 1977. Bishop Giuse Maria Nguyễn Tùng Cương died in 1999. They were tied to Hải Phòng all their lives, and they rest at the very center of the spiritual life they served.

In 2000 the church was renovated and its interior refreshed, but the original Gothic architecture was kept exactly as it was. The pointed arches, the bell tower and the colored glass seen there today have stood for more than a century in the middle of the port city.

Beneath that bell tower, 28 meters high, rays of many colors pass through the glass and draw patterns on the floor inside. This is why people call Gothic the architecture of light.