CBC’s Western Blvd headquarters now has a new neighbor, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral. Located just across Nazareth Street from the WRAL-TV studios, the Cathedral will be dedicated on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, and WRAL will be there, live streaming the dedication Mass at 2pm on WRAL.com, providing live coverage on WRAL-TV, and broadcasting a half-hour special about the Cathedral at 7pm on WRAL-TV:
Doors opening on Catholic cathedral in Raleigh
After more than six years of planning and two years of construction, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral opens in Raleigh on Wednesday.
Former Bishop Michael Burbidge, who first envisioned the cathedral to reflect the growth of the Catholic church throughout eastern North Carolina, will return to Raleigh to lead a special dedication Mass at 2 p.m. WRAL.com will provide live coverage of the event.
The $46 million cathedral sits on property Father Thomas Price, the first native North Carolinian ordained as a Catholic priest, purchased in the 1890s as the site of a Catholic chapel and later an orphanage. The property off Western Boulevard also has served as the site of Cardinal Gibbons High School and Catholic Diocese of Raleigh offices.
The cathedral, which seats 2,000 people, succeeds Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Raleigh as the home church of the bishop of the diocese, which covers 54 counties in central and eastern North Carolina. Sacred Heart seats only 300, and Burbidge and others said the growing diocese needed a larger space for the faithful to gather.
Cathedral images: January 2015 groundbreaking | March 2016 construction update
Through an extensive fundraising campaign, the diocese was able to pay for the cathedral – it opens without a mortgage or any other outstanding debt – and provide extra funding for outreach efforts to the poor, answering critics who said donations should target more pressing needs than a new building.
Read the rest of this WRAL.com story, plus access additional stories, photo and video of the Cathedral and its construction HERE.
