A Bay State bonanza on a basilica wall

As soon as I walked into Memorial Hall in Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception I started seeing the local connections -- the name of a family from Boston here, from Hingham there. From Stoughton. From Cambridge. And on, and on. And then there was the column dedicated to Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, who was the archbishop of Boston from 1944 until his death in 1970.

It was Friday night, and the religion writers gathered in Washington for the annual Religion Newswriters Association convention were on kind of a field trip to visit the basilica, a cavernous, gilded, semi-Byzantine, semi-Romanesque 20th Century structure that got a lot of attention in April when Pope Benedict XVI visited.

At first I thought Memorial Hall was some kind of immense mausoleum, but it turns out that the names are those of donors who contributed to make the church possible. I could not figure out why the list of donors read like a Boston-area phone directory, so this morning I e-mailed Jackie Hayes, the basilica's communications director. Here's her explanation:

"You are right that there are many Massachusetts names on the walls in Memorial Hall. According to the Basilica's Development Director, Mr. Lindy Bowman, our records indicate that there are a total of 882 names with a Massachusetts address. This represents roughly 6.5% of the 13,437 total names in Memorial Hall. Dr. Geraldine Rohling, the Basilica's Archivist, notes that Cardinal Cushing was a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Shrine and thereby played a significant role in raising awareness, funds and ultimately the edifice itself. He was one of the 5 U.S. Cardinals present at its dedication on November 20, 1959. He had great devotion to Mary, patroness of the United States, for whom the National Shrine is dedicated under her title of the Immaculate Conception. Under his leadership, the Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe (located in the Great Upper Church) was dedicated, a gift of the Archdiocese of Boston. So, Cardinal Cushing and the Faithful of Massachusetts played a significant role in building the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, affectionately referred to as 'America's Catholic Church' -- the largest Catholic church in the United States and North America and one of the ten largest churches in the world."

(Photo by Brian A. Peat for the Religion Newswriters Association.)