The Big Old Sanctuary: The Church of Our Lady of Loretto

1856–2026

Two Loretto structures, kept distinct. The sanctuary on the bluff is in fact two buildings of one dedication, and the record keeps them separate. The first is the Chapel of Loretto — the Little Chapel of Loretto, the Holy House: built on architectural plans brought from Rome by Father Neal Gillespie, C.S.C., Mother Angela's brother, modeled on the Holy House of Loreto in Italy, and measuring thirty-one feet by thirteen. The sisters' building files date it 1856; the college's chronology of important dates calls the Holy House of Loretto the campus's first permanent chapel in 1859; the college's 2021 release calls it the first brick building on campus, and the archives call it the oldest building on Saint Mary's campus. The 1856 and 1859 dates both stand, as the archives print them. When the great church rose, the little chapel was moved, in 1886, to make room.

The church of 1886. The Church of Our Lady of Loretto was completed in 1886 after six years of building — the architect John W. Stamper dates the build to 1885 — in Romanesque Revival form on a circular, octagonal plan, modeled, the archives say, on Santa Maria di Carignano in Genoa. The architect's name stands in the record under two spellings, George Crigeant of Chicago in the archives' building files and Gregory Vigeant in Stamper's account — the same man, carried two ways, printed both ways here; his near-exact copy of the church, Notre Dame de Chicago, still stands in Chicago. The first Mass was said on 12 November 1887, and the main altar was consecrated on 29 August 1888. For sixty years it was the motherhouse's church and the sisters' daily place — the great sanctuary of the bluff, visible in every early view of Saint Mary's.

Rebuilt on its own foundations, 1954–1956. By the early 1950s the aging church was cleaned out for rebuilding by its own sacristan, and in 1954–56 it was, in the archives' word, rebuilt on the foundations of the first church, to designs by Paul Jacques Grillo with the South Bend architect and engineer Otto Seeler. The windows and statues of the older building were kept in the new one — the fabric of 1886 carried inside the walls of 1956 — and the rebuilt church, which the archives style Late-Romanesque Revival, opened in April 1956. A remodel and renovation followed in 1990–93. No 1940s building course for Loretto stands in the record; the documented course is the chapel of the 1850s, the church of 1886, and the rebuilding of 1954–56.

The sisters' church, today. Loretto is the church of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross on the Saint Mary's campus — not a parish church, a distinction with consequences the record keeps: weddings were prohibited there on that ground until permission was granted in the mid-1980s for Saint Mary's students and alumnae to marry in it, a change The Observer marked in January 1985. Its present course is daily and public: the college's current listing gives Mass at 7:00 and 11:00 a.m. on weekdays, 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, and 9:45 and 11:15 a.m. on Sunday, and the congregation invites the public to its Sunday Mass. The college's nurses are pinned there; each December the annual Lessons and Carols fills it with the college's and the sisters' choirs together. West of Augusta Hall stands the Pietà by Sibbel that came out of the church, and south of it Father Moreau Park, the congregation's memorial garden.

Sources

1. HARC, Archival Reference Guide — the building files and chronology for the Chapel of Loretto (1856; moved 1886), the Church of Our Lady of Loretto (completed 1886; first Mass 12 November 1887; altar consecrated 29 August 1888; the 1954–56 rebuild by Grillo and Seeler; the April 1956 opening; the 1990–93 renovation), and the shrines list (the Sibbel Pietà; Father Moreau Park).
2. Saint Mary's College, "Important Dates in Saint Mary's History" (HARC) — the Holy House of Loretto as first permanent chapel, 1859, as printed.
3. John W. Stamper, in Notre Dame Magazine, "Grand Designs" — the 1885 build, the octagonal plan, Gregory Vigeant, and Notre Dame de Chicago.
4. Sisters of the Holy Cross, the congregation's Loretto page — the church of the congregation on the Saint Mary's campus.
5. Saint Mary's College news release (2021) — the Little Chapel of Loretto as the first brick building on campus.
6. Saint Mary's College, area churches listing (current) — the Loretto Mass schedule.
7. The Observer, 18 January 1985 — the weddings permission of the mid-1980s.