![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/001de867-614.jpg\"\/)
\nThe church has unobstructed sight lines to the central altar<\/p>\n
A series of events are being held in Co Mayo today to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Catholic Basilica in Knock.<\/p>\n
The building has accommodated millions of pilgrims to the Marian Shrine since the 1976.<\/p>\n
A Mass of thanksgiving will be celebrated later today, with guided tours, film screenings and panel discussions also taking place.<\/p>\n
Basilicas come about as a result of papal designations, to honour spiritual, historical or architectural significance.<\/p>\n
\nThe church has unobstructed sight lines to the central altar<\/p>\n
The Basilica in Knock ticks all those boxes. It is a place of pilgrimage, a striking structure and central to the wider story of the area. It was elevated to the status of Basilica by Pope John Paul II during his visit to the shrine in 1979.<\/p>\n
The building was first envisaged by Monsignor James Horan, soon after his arrival in the village in the early 1970s. Keen to develop facilities for pilgrims, he set about acquiring land adjacent to the shrine and the means to build on it.<\/p>\n
Designed by D\u00e1ithi P Hanly, it has five internal segments that can each accommodate 1,000 people. These radiate out from a central sanctuary.<\/p>\n
The church has unobstructed sight lines to the central altar and was constructed to allow spill over crowds of up to 2,500 to gather outside on a “covered ambulatory”, which circles the building.<\/p>\n
The Royal Irish Academy\u2019s Dictionary of Irish Biography describes the design as Hanly\u2019s “most ambitious commission”.<\/p>\n
It dominates the skyline around Knock and serves as a focal point at the centre of the Marian Shrine there.<\/p>\n
Parish Priest Fr Richard Gibbons said today\u2019s celebrations would combine prayer, reflection, storytelling and thanksgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A series of events are being held in Co Mayo today to mark the 50th anniversary of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-556050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}