Pope Leo XIV today inaugurated and blessed the recently-completed Tower of Jesus Christ at the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and led the Solemn Mass commemorating the centenary, this very day, of the death of the basilica’s principal architect, Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was struck by a tram on June 7, 1926, and died of his injuries on June 10. The tower the Pope inaugurated—now the basilica’s tallest, and the tallest church spire in the world—is the eighteenth and final tower of Gaudí's design. The basilica as a whole is in its 144th year of construction; principal works are projected for completion in 2034.
That is the time scale on which the Sagrada Familia was conceived and is being built: longer than the lifetimes of architects, workers, donors, and popes—and longer than the lifetimes of regimes. Gaudí, who began work on the basilica in 1883 and served as its chief architect for forty-three years, said of the project, “My client is not in a hurry.”
The Pope’s choice to inaugurate the Tower of Jesus on the exact centenary of Gaudí's death points to time horizons longer than the political weather. While short-term thinking dominates too much thought today, the Sagrada Familia communicates something else: it is an architecture of peace, put into practice.
