Mumbai: When lakhs of Mother Mary devotees throng Bandra’s Mount Mary Basilica for the annual feast next month, they will find a sacred space restored to its old glory.
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount, as it is officially called, is ready for inauguration after extensive restoration work that began in 2023. While the earlier plan was to keep the church open for pilgrims even as work progressed, the building was closed in October 2024 for restoration and religious services shifted outside.
Conservation architect David Cardoz who worked on the project along with fellow architect Ainsley Lewis, said that the restoration work focussed on bringing back the natural materials used in the early-twentieth century structure, like wood and cast iron. The building was under attack by termites when it was taken up for restoration. Fortunately, the white ants could not get through the old and trusty Burma teak.
Cardoz said that the church follows the traditional cruciform style, with the arms of the cross in the north-south direction. However, the building does not adhere to any distinct style of architecture. “It can be called quasi-Gothic, following the traditional cardinal directions, with Gothic windows and spires in the elevation,” said Cardoz who had earlier worked on the restoration of Byculla’s Gloria Church with Lewis. The project won an UNESCO award for architecture conservation.
During the restoration, the team found artefacts like paintings and commemorative stone slabs that were stored away from public view. When the paint added to the pillars were scraped away, the restorers were amazed to find that they were made of 16-feet-high trunks of wood. Father Sunder Albuquerque, vice-rector at the shrine, said that the plan is to display the artefacts in a small museum in the building. Albuquerque added that the restored church will be inaugurated after the feast either by the current Archbishop of Bombay, John Rodrigues, or Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the earlier head of the archdiocese.
Cardoz, who has been part of the Church Heritage Committee, a group trying to preserve religious architecture, said, “I am a Bandra resident and the church is very dear to all of us in Bandra. It was a joy to take up the work. The priests were encouraging and the reaction to the work has been amazingly good.”
The Bandra fair, held from the Sunday following September 8 which is observed as the feast day of Mother Mary, will be held between September 14 and 21.
The current basilica building is the last in a series of structures on the site. In 1570, a private oratory made of mud walls was built on a hill near Lands End. A wooden statue of Mary, depicted as the Mother of God, was brought by the Jesuits from Portugal and placed on the main altar. When devotees started visiting the oratory, the shrine was enlarged into a public chapel in 1640. Sixty years later, when the area was invaded by Arabs, the wooden statue was desecrated and another image from the nearby St Andrew's Church was installed at the chapel. Between 1741 and 1761, the chapel was not used because of political instability and lack of priests. The chapel was rebuilt and the statue damaged during the Arab invasion was restored with the addition of a Child Jesus and reinstalled.
After the construction of the Mahim Causeway in 1852 and the building of Bandra railway station, the number of pilgrims grew. In 1904, the present church, the fourth building at the site, was completed. In 1954, the church was given the status of a minor basilica by Pope Pius XII. Two popes, Paul VI, and St John Paul II have visited the basilica in 1964 and 1986 respectively.
