Sheshan Catholic Church Shanghai

This guide to Sheshan Catholic Church in Shanghai opens amid the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards toppled the hilltop basilica's bronze Madonna and gutted its stained glass, yet worshippers kept climbing the hill anyway. It traces a night in 1979 when believers said light was radiating from the Holy Mother, and reaches back to Father Gu Zhensheng's 1868 vow that first built the basilica in thanks for a rebellion's passing. Some six thousand believers turned out for its 1871 foundation, its stone carried up this hill by hand from Fujian province.