The Basilica of the Sacred Heart — a French glass collection in Indiana

1842 – present · pilgrimage, a funeral the world heard, and the glass

The fame: The church on the campus has been a place of pilgrimage since Sorin built Sacred Heart for the purpose in 1871 — but its documented claim on the wider world is the glass. The University of Notre Dame Press, in its series on the Basilica, states it flatly: the Basilica "contains one of the largest collections of late nineteenth-century French stained glass outside of France" — forty-four windows comprising two hundred twenty scenes, made by the Carmelite nuns' glassworks at Le Mans and installed across 1873–1888. The Press gives the measure of the pilgrimage in the present tense: more than one hundred thousand visitors tour the basilica each year. On 17 January 1992 the church was named a minor basilica, the thirty-seventh in the United States in Notre Dame News's count.

The day the world listened: On Holy Saturday, 4 April 1931, Knute Rockne's funeral Mass was sung in this church — Sacred Heart, as it then was — before a congregation admitted by card, while the standard accounts record the service broadcast on network radio across the United States and carried to Europe, South America and Asia. It is among the earliest moments this ground was present, live, in houses on four continents; the Events history in this record tells the funeral whole, the cortege through a downtown that stopped for it, and carries the crowd figures' conflicts as they stand.

Cross-reference: The church’s building, its Gregori murals, its documented restorations and its pilgrimage machinery are the Basilica record’s own, in this history; the funeral is the Events history’s. This entry carries the glass claim, the visitor count, the designation, and the broadcast — the fame's four documents.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame Press — the Basilica of the Sacred Heart series drawn from Stories in Light (2020): the Le Mans collection as one of the largest of its kind outside France; 44 windows, 220 scenes; more than 100,000 visitors a year.
2. The Notre Dame history in this record — the church raised 1871 for pilgrims "from all parts of the country"; the glass installed 1873–1888; the minor basilica designation of 17 January 1992, the 37th in the nation in ND News's count.
3. The Events history in this record — Rockne's funeral, 4 April 1931, the card-only congregation and the civic cortege; the network-radio broadcast as the standard accounts record it.