The plan Pierre Charles L'Enfant drew in 1791 stops at the foot of an escarpment. It takes in the ground bounded by the Potomac, the Eastern Branch, Rock Creek and the base of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line — the soft sediment of the coastal plain, marsh in places, filled riverbed beneath parts of what is now the Mall — and lays it out in avenues arranged so that each one ends on a building. L'Enfant set the Congress House on Jenkins Hill and called the hill a pedestal waiting for a monument. Above the escarpment the ground turns to the hard rock of the Piedmont, and the plan does not follow it. The Catholic city was built up there. In 1887 the Church bought the Middleton estate on the Brookland ridge for its university, and colleges, orders and shrines gathered around it until the neighbourhood was called Little Rome.
The bishops of the United States, meeting at Baltimore in 1846, chose the Blessed Virgin Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception as patroness of the country, and Pius IX confirmed the choice on February 7, 1847. In 1913 Bishop Thomas Shahan of Catholic University carried the plan for a church of that title to Pius X, who gave him four hundred dollars and his blessing. Pope Francis canonized the Franciscan Junípero Serra at that church on September 23, 2015, in the first canonization on American ground.
The things pilgrims come to stand before are within two kilometres of each other on the ridge. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was raised without a steel frame, on thick masonry walls and columns in the medieval manner, and carries more than eighty chapels and oratories built by the peoples and religious orders that paid for them; the papal tiara of Paul VI and the Golden Rose of Benedict XVI are kept in the Crypt Church below. Six hundred metres northwest, a glass ampoule of John Paul II's blood sits at the centre of a reliquary, and beside it a piece of the cassock he wore on 13 May 1981. East of both, on the hill the friars named Mount St. Sepulchre, a church holds full-size replicas of Christ's tomb and of the grottoes at Bethlehem and Nazareth, worked from measurements taken on the sites themselves.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
The Catholic history of the region begins downriver. On March 25, 1634, the Jesuit Andrew White celebrated Mass at St. Clement's Island, at the mouth of the Potomac, for the settlers who had come out with the charter granted to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, two years earlier — a colony in which Catholics could practise their religion openly.
Georgetown was a tobacco port at the head of navigation on the Potomac when the parish of Holy Trinity was founded there in 1787 at the direction of John Carroll. Two years later Carroll bought an acre on the hill above the river for a college. He was named the first Catholic bishop in the United States in 1789, with his see at Baltimore. St. Patrick's, the first Catholic church inside the new federal city, was established in 1794 for the Irish craftsmen cutting stone for the Capitol and the President's House.
The bishops of the country, assembled in the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1846, named the Immaculate Conception patroness of the United States. Pius IX formalized the designation on February 7, 1847, seven years before he defined the doctrine itself.
The institutions came to the Brookland ridge from 1887, when the Church acquired the Middleton estate for the Catholic University of America. In 1897 Father Godfrey Schilling bought a neighbouring hilltop for the Franciscan Commissariat of the Holy Land; ground was broken in February 1898 and the monastery opened the following year.
Bishop Thomas Shahan of Catholic University took the idea of a national church of the Immaculate Conception to Pius X on August 15, 1913, and received the pope's blessing and a personal contribution of four hundred dollars. Archbishop Giovanni Bonzano blessed the site on May 16, 1920, and Cardinal James Gibbons blessed the foundation stone on September 23 of that year. The Depression and the Second World War halted the work. The Great Upper Church was dedicated on November 20, 1959. The three mosaic domes were finished later: the Redemption Dome in August 2006, the Incarnation Dome in November 2007, and the Trinity Dome, which took twenty-four tons of Venetian glass, in December 2017.
Downtown, the parish of St. Matthew the Apostle had been established in 1840, the fourth in the District. The Renaissance Revival church that C. Grant LaFarge designed for it opened on June 2, 1895, and its octagonal dome was completed in 1913. When the Archdiocese of Washington was separated from Baltimore in 1947, St. Matthew's became its cathedral. On November 25, 1963, Cardinal Richard Cushing celebrated the funeral Mass of President John F. Kennedy there before heads of state from around the world; a marble plaque marks where the casket rested. The archdiocese now serves some 667,000 Catholics in 140 parishes and missions across the District and the Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George's, Charles, Calvert and St. Mary's.
Three popes have visited the National Shrine. John Paul II was the first, on October 7, 1979. Benedict XVI bestowed the Golden Rose in 2008. Pope Francis canonized Junípero Serra at the basilica on September 23, 2015.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Washington, D.C.
Three of the sites stand on the Brookland ridge in Northeast Washington, all of them walkable from the Brookland-CUA Metro station: the basilica, the John Paul II shrine six hundred metres northwest of it, and the Franciscan monastery a little over a kilometre east. The cathedral is downtown, four and a half kilometres southwest, and Holy Trinity is in Georgetown.
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
The largest Roman Catholic church in North America and one of the ten largest in the world, the basilica reaches 329 feet and encloses 206,301 square feet across the Great Upper Church and the Crypt Church beneath it. It was built in the manner of medieval churches, its weight carried by thick masonry walls and columns, with no structural steel anywhere in it. Three mosaic domes crown the Byzantine-Romanesque shell — Redemption, Incarnation, and the Trinity Dome, whose twenty-four tons of Venetian glass were set in place in 2017.
More than eighty chapels and oratories line the two levels, each paid for by a people or a religious order and dedicated under the title that people brought with them: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Częstochowa, Our Lady of La Vang, Our Lady of Antipolo, Our Mother of Africa. The Crypt Church keeps the papal tiara of Paul VI, given in 1968, and the Golden Rose that Benedict XVI bestowed in 2008. Nearly a million visitors come each year.
Saint John Paul II National Shrine
The building opened in March 2001 as the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center. The Knights of Columbus bought it in 2011 for $22.7 million and rebuilt it around the pope's memory; the U.S. bishops designated it a national shrine in 2014, the year of his canonization.
Two relics are here. A first-class relic of John Paul II's blood is held in a glass ampoule at the centre of an ornate reliquary in the Luminous Mysteries Chapel, and a piece of the blood-stained cassock he was wearing on 13 May 1981, when Mehmet Ali Ağca shot him in St. Peter's Square, is kept for veneration. The Redemptor Hominis Church seats five hundred and is lined with mosaics of the Old and New Testaments. A permanent exhibit of 16,000 square feet, "A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II," follows Karol Wojtyła from Nazi-occupied Poland to Rome.
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle
C. Grant LaFarge, who also designed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, gave the parish a Renaissance Revival church that opened on June 2, 1895. An octagonal dome rises 190 feet above the nave, added in 1913. Behind the altar stands Edwin Blashfield's mosaic of St. Matthew, thirty-five feet high, and the walls carry mosaic work in the Ravenna manner. The cathedral was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 1974, and restored between 2000 and 2003.
As the mother church of the Archdiocese of Washington it is the seat of the archbishop. The funeral Mass of President Kennedy was celebrated here on November 25, 1963, and a marble plaque in the floor marks where the casket rested. John Paul II met the clergy of the archdiocese here in 1979, and Pope Francis prayed Midday Prayer with the American bishops here in 2015. Mother Teresa came in 1974; the Russian sculptor Leonid Bodnia later made the statue of her with a homeless man that stands in the cathedral. The Red Mass is celebrated here each autumn on the Sunday before the Supreme Court opens its term.
Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America
Father Godfrey Schilling bought this hilltop in 1897 and the friars named it Mount St. Sepulchre. The Italian architect Aristide Leonori laid out the Memorial Church on a floor plan that loosely follows the fivefold Jerusalem cross and built it in a neo-Byzantine style after Hagia Sophia. This is the American house of the Franciscan Commissariat of the Holy Land, the order charged by the Church with the guardianship of the shrines in Palestine; the monastery opened in 1899, and the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 17, 1992.
The friars built it for American Catholics who could not make the journey to Palestine. Inside are full-size replicas of the Holy Sepulchre, the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the Grotto of the Annunciation at Nazareth, and the Garden of Gethsemane, worked from measurements and photographs the friars took on the sites. Below the church a reproduction of the Roman catacombs runs through the hill, holding the bones of St. Benignus of Armagh, brought from the catacombs themselves. The forty-two acres of grounds carry a Lourdes grotto, the Stations of the Cross, a replica of the Portiuncula chapel from Assisi, and more than a thousand roses. Around the churchyard runs the Rosary Portico, designed by John Joseph Earley, with fifteen mosaic chapels and plaques of the Ave Maria in nearly two hundred languages.
Holy Trinity Catholic Church
The oldest Catholic parish in Washington, founded in 1787 at the direction of John Carroll, two years before he bought the ground for Georgetown College and was named the first Catholic bishop in the United States. The first building, finished in 1794 and known then as the Georgetown Chapel, stands as the Chapel of St. Ignatius and is used for smaller celebrations.
The larger church of 1851 was taken over by the federal government during the Civil War and used as a hospital, treating more than two hundred wounded soldiers after the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. The parish has been served by Jesuits throughout and has long drawn the students of Georgetown University next door. The Kennedy family worshipped here, and a plaque in the church records it.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception — December 8
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The patronal feast of the United States and the titular feast of the basilica, kept with solemn Mass beneath the Trinity Dome.
Red Mass — Sunday before the first Monday in October
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. Celebrated on the eve of the Supreme Court's term to invoke the Holy Spirit upon those responsible for the administration of justice. The John Carroll Society has sponsored it at St. Matthew's since 1953, and the congregation regularly includes justices, members of Congress, cabinet officers and the diplomatic corps. The custom itself goes back to medieval Europe.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Washington Marriott Marquis ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Large convention hotel beside the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, with Metro connections to the Brookland shrines. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
The Fairfax at Embassy Row ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Historic hotel among the mansions of Massachusetts Avenue at Dupont Circle, a short walk from St. Matthew's Cathedral. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Holiday Inn Washington Capitol – National Mall ⭐⭐⭐ — Simpler option near the National Mall, on the Metro line that runs out to Brookland. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) is 5 miles south of downtown; Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) is 26 miles west. Both have Metro or shuttle connections into the city.
By Train: Union Station serves Amtrak routes from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and points south. The Red Line runs from Union Station directly to Brookland-CUA for the shrines and to Farragut North for St. Matthew's.
By Car: From I-95, take I-395 into the city. Parking is available at the National Shrine off 4th Street NE and at the Franciscan Monastery at Quincy and 14th Streets NE. Downtown parking is limited.
Local Transport: Brookland-CUA on the Red Line is a five-minute walk from the National Shrine, the St. John Paul II Shrine and the Franciscan Monastery. Farragut North, also on the Red Line, is two blocks from St. Matthew's Cathedral. Foggy Bottom-GWU on the Blue, Orange and Silver Lines is the nearest station to Georgetown.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Geraldine M. Rohling. Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Scala Publishers) — A guide to the basilica's art, architecture and history.
George Weigel. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — The standard biography of the pope venerated at the Brookland shrine.
Morris J. MacGregor. A Parish for the Federal City: St. Patrick's in Washington, 1794-1994 (Catholic University of America Press) — A history of the first Catholic parish inside the city.
Articles & Online Resources:
Basilica of the National Shrine: Art & Architecture — The shrine's own account of its mosaics, chapels and art.
The Catholic Travel Guide: Washington D.C. — An overview of the Catholic sites in the city.
🔗 Useful Links
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Saint John Paul II National Shrine
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle
Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land
Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Georgetown
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Baltimore (52 km northeast) — The first Catholic diocese in the United States, with the Baltimore Basilica — the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary — the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, and the Mother Seton House.
Emmitsburg (90 km north) — Two national shrines in a small Maryland mountain town: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at Mount St. Mary's.
Philadelphia (197 km northeast) — The national shrines of St. John Neumann and of St. Rita of Cascia, with the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.
Doylestown (219 km northeast) — The National Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the chief Polish-American pilgrimage centre, kept by the Pauline Fathers.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"I commend the Church in your country most particularly to the maternal care and intercession of Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States."
