Shrines and Basilicas

The great basilica over the tomb of St. Peter and the center of Catholic pilgrimage in Rome.

The cathedral of Rome and 'mother of all churches,' the pope's cathedral church.

The largest Marian church in Rome and one of the four papal major basilicas.

Built over the burial place of St. Paul the Apostle; one of the four papal major basilicas.

A basilica enclosing the Holy House venerated as the home of the Holy Family from Nazareth.

The largest Catholic church in North America and the patronal shrine of the United States.

Home of the Black Madonna icon and Poland's foremost Marian pilgrimage site.

A mountain monastery near Barcelona, home to the venerated statue of the Virgin of Montserrat ('La Moreneta').

The first of the California missions, founded by St. Junipero Serra, now a minor basilica.

The patronal shrine of Brazil and the largest Marian basilica in the world, built over the venerated image of Our Lady of Aparecida.

A great Marian basilica honoring an ancient tradition that Mary appeared to St. James beside a pillar.

The national Marian shrine of Argentina, built over the venerated image of Our Lady of Lujan.

The national Marian shrine of Venezuela, associated with an apparition to an indigenous chief.

A dramatic basilica built into a canyon, honoring a venerated image of Our Lady of Las Lajas.

Encloses the Porziuncola, the little chapel at the heart of the Franciscan movement.

'England's Nazareth,' a restored medieval Marian shrine.

A basilica of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, crowning Montmartre.

The most important Marian shrine in Austria and a major Central European pilgrimage.

Germany's foremost Marian shrine, home to a venerated Black Madonna.

A Benedictine abbey and Switzerland's most important place of pilgrimage, home to a Black Madonna.

America's first cathedral and a landmark of U.S. Catholic history.

One of the largest outdoor shrines in the United States.

A center of the Divine Mercy devotion associated with St. Faustina.

The 'American Czestochowa,' honoring the Black Madonna of Poland.

One of the first shrines dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux.

In 1776 in Southern California, Father Junípero Serra founded the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, named for St. John, for mission work to the Indians. In 1776, when the American Revolution was beginning in the east, another part of the future United States was being born in California. San Juan was the seventh of nine missions established under the direction of this indomitable Spaniard. The mission was founded by Serra in November 1776, its Indian name being Sajirit or Quanis-savit, at present San Juan in Orange County. It became one of the most beloved and visited mission sites in all of California, renowned for its gardens, its ancient chapel, the ruins of its great stone church, and the legendary return of its swallows each year on the feast of St. Joseph. The mission is a historical site, and has both a Catholic Basilica and the original smaller chapel that are still used for Catholic liturgy. The mission is named for St. John of Capistrano, a fifteenth-century Franciscan friar, preacher, lawyer, soldier, and saint whose life was itself a drama of conversion and radical apostolic courage. The mission bearing his name would carry that same spirit of total surrender to Christ into the service of the Acagchemem people of coastal Southern California.

The site of the first Marian shrine in the United States, at the nation's oldest city.

The church at the heart of the University of Notre Dame.

Father Junípero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá on July 16, 1769, the first in the chain of missions which extended from San Diego to Sonoma, a distance of about six hundred miles. It is the anchor of El Camino Real, the southernmost point of the entire California mission system, and the place where Catholic civilization in what is now the United States took its first deep root on the Pacific coast. The first of the projected mission sites was to be on beautiful San Diego Bay. Over one hundred and fifty years previously, Vizcaíno had explored the bay and named it for the saint on whose feast day he landed, St. Didacus, or San Diego de Alcalá. The mission is named for St. Didacus of Alcalá, a fifteenth-century Spanish Franciscan lay brother renowned for his humility, his care for the sick, and his profound mystical life. He is a fitting patron for a mission that would labor to serve the bodily and spiritual needs of the native Kumeyaay people of Southern California.

Carmel Mission was St. Junípero Serra's home and the headquarters of the whole mission chain. He is buried beneath the sanctuary, which makes this the most important pilgrimage stop on the trail for anyone following his life.

Mission San Antonio de Padua sits alone in a wide valley in the Santa Lucia Mountains, with no town built up around it. It is the quietest mission on the trail and the best place to see what the setting actually looked like in the 1700s.

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was founded by St. Junípero Serra on September 8, 1771, the fourth of the nine missions he personally established along El Camino Real. Its Indian name was Sibagna, or Tobiscagna, and it was situated on the San Gabriel River, about ten miles east of what is today Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County. San Gabriel would go on to be one of the most successful and productive of all the 21 California missions. It became the agricultural and economic powerhouse of the entire mission system, the gateway through which the great city of Los Angeles would be born, and the spiritual mother of the vast Gabrieleño Tongva people of Southern California. "Mission San Gabriel will always be the true spiritual heart of Los Angeles," as Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles declared. "The mission marks the birthplace of the Christian faith here and, 10 years after the mission was established, the city itself was founded by men and women who came from the mission." The mission is named for St. Gabriel the Archangel, whose very name means "Fortitudo Dei" — the Strength of God. The final mention of Gabriel in Scripture is found in Luke 1, where he goes to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the tidings that she is to be the Mother of the Messiah, and thus we see that Gabriel comes as the bearer of good tidings and as the comforter and helper of men. The mission bearing his name was sent on a similar errand: to bring the Good News to a people who had not yet heard it.

Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa stands right in the middle of downtown San Luis Obispo, still serving as the town's Catholic parish. It is an easy, welcoming stop where the mission and the modern city share the same plaza.

Mission Dolores holds the oldest intact building in San Francisco, a small adobe chapel from 1791 that came through the 1906 earthquake unharmed. Next to it stands a minor basilica, and behind both lies a cemetery where thousands of Ohlone and Miwok people are buried.

Mission Santa Clara is the only mission that stands on a university campus, serving as the chapel of Santa Clara University. It was the first California mission named for a woman saint, and it is still used daily for Mass.

Mission San Buenaventura was the last mission St. Junípero Serra founded himself, and it sits in the heart of downtown Ventura. Pope Francis raised it to a minor basilica in 2020, and it is still a busy parish church.

Known as the Queen of the Missions for its twin bell towers and hillside setting, Mission Santa Bárbara is the only mission that Franciscan friars have served without a break since it was founded. It is a parish, a museum, a friary, and a research archive all at once.

La Purísima is the most completely restored mission in California, with its church, shops, quarters, and workshops all rebuilt and furnished. It is the best place on the trail to understand how a mission actually worked day to day.

Mission Santa Cruz is the smallest stop on the trail, a half-size replica chapel built in 1931 after the original church collapsed in an earthquake. A block away, an adobe from 1824 preserves rooms where Native families lived.

Mission Soledad is the loneliest and least visited mission on the trail, set among farm fields in the Salinas Valley. Its name means Our Lady of Solitude, and the small rebuilt chapel and the ruins around it suit that title.

Mission San José was one of the largest and most productive missions, famous in its day for a thirty-piece Native orchestra. The adobe church visitors see today is a careful reconstruction of the 1809 original, completed in 1985.

Mission San Juan Bautista has the largest church of the 21 missions, the only one with three aisles, and Mass has been said here without a break since 1797. It faces a Spanish plaza that still looks much as it did in the 1800s.

Mission San Miguel has the only mission interior in California whose original wall paintings have never been repainted or touched up. Walking in is the closest a visitor can come to seeing a mission church exactly as the people who built it left it.

Mission San Fernando is best known for its Convento, a long two-story adobe with nineteen arches that is the largest freestanding adobe building in California. The mission gave the San Fernando Valley its name.

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia was founded by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén in 1798. Its Indian name was Tacayme, and it was situated four miles up the San Luis Rey River, on the south side, in San Diego County. It became not merely the eighteenth link in the chain of El Camino Real, but one of the most prosperous and populous missions in all of California, earning the title "King of the Missions" for the breadth of its reach, its architecture, and the number of souls it gathered into the fold of Christ. The mission is named for St. Louis IX of France, a canonized thirteenth-century king whose life was a living testimony that holiness is not reserved for cloisters. He was king, warrior, father, husband, and saint, and the mission bearing his name would carry that same spirit of royal generosity into the service of the Luiseño people of Southern California.

Mission Santa Inés sits on a bluff above the Santa Ynez Valley at the edge of Solvang, with long views over the hills. It is an active parish and holds one of the finest collections of mission-era vestments in California.

Mission San Rafael began not as a mission but as a hospital, a warmer place to send people who were falling sick at foggy Mission Dolores. Nothing original survives, but a 1949 replica chapel stands beside the modern parish church on the original site.

Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma is the last and northernmost of the 21 missions, and the only one founded after Mexico won independence from Spain. It marks the end of the mission trail and is preserved today as a museum.

Loretto Chapel is a small Gothic Revival chapel in downtown Santa Fe, built by the Sisters of Loretto and finished in 1878. It is famous for a spiral wooden staircase to the choir loft that turns twice with no center post, and for a popular tradition that St. Joseph himself built it.

The Scala Santa is a flight of twenty-eight marble steps in Rome that pilgrims climb on their knees while praying. Tradition says these are the stairs Jesus climbed in Pontius Pilate's palace during his Passion, brought from Jerusalem to Rome in the fourth century.

Christ Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Catholic Diocese of Orange, a vast building of glass and steel in Garden Grove, California. It opened in 1980 as the Protestant Crystal Cathedral, was bought by the diocese out of bankruptcy in 2012, and was dedicated for Catholic worship in 2019.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris started construction in 1163, but its origins go back to the seventh century and even before the Christian era. The cathedral is one of the world's most recognizable landmarks and has been immortalized in literary works such as Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame." It stands as the mother church of the Archdiocese of Paris and a monument not merely to French cultural pride but to the Catholic civilization that built it: stone by stone, century by century, as an act of praise to God and a home for the Body of Christ on earth.