Church
Catedral Metropolitana Ortodoxa Antioquina de São Paulo
Byzantine-style cathedral modeled on Hagia Sophia, seat of an Antiochian Orthodox archdiocese.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to the Antiochian Orthodox cathedral in São Paulo opens with an odd fact: the Byzantine dome opened for worship in 1954 but sat unconsecrated for twenty-four years. To explain the wait, it traces the community that built it back to Ottoman persecution driving Orthodox families out of Syria and Lebanon in 1890, a rented-hall liturgy in 1897, and a small church funded by one merchant whose bronze bell still hangs inside. It follows how that growing congregation outgrew its first home and modeled this one on Hagia Sophia.
This audio guide was created using AI.