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THE METROPOLITAN
CATHEDRAL
About a hundred yards down the Plaza de Mayo, is the you know that before the Pope entered the seminary,
Catholic Church’s main site in Argentina, the Metropoli- he was a bouncer at a nightclub in Buenos Aires?
tan Cathedral. It is especially popular with tourists now The city’s founder Juan de Garay directed that the
because this is where Pope Francis, as Archbishop first place of worship be built on this site in 1593. It
Jorge Bergoglio, performed mass before becoming the has been redesigned or rebuilt seven times ending in
Pope in 2013. There’s a Pope Francis Museum in the the mid-nineteenth century. Today the cathedral looks
church complex that exhibits his personal and liturgical more like a Greek temple than a Catholic church with
objects. It was amazing how many locals say that they 12 neoclassical columns at the front represent the
saw the Archbishop on the streets of Buenos Aires. Did twelve apostles of Christ.
46 WDT MAGAZINE WINTER 2018
