Churches in Pakistan
The Sacret Heart Cathedral in Lahore, designed by Belgian architect Edouard Dobbeleers.
From the mountains of Malakand -- home to what was once British India's northernmost church -- to the southern seaport of Karachi, Pakistan has numerous examples of outstanding Christian architecture.
The Sacret Heart Cathedral is praised for its interior and is jammed with worshippers on Sundays. Credit: Isambard Wilkinson
Inside the bell tower of Cathedral Church of Lahore. Credit: Isambard Wilkinson
Judged by some architecture critics to be almost a pastiche of the Early English style, the church features mellow stained-glass windows and a lavish golden altar, giving it the soaring serenity of an English provincial cathedral. The structure is beautifully rounded off with a semi-circular ambulatory, illuminated by colored trefoil windows with the deep richness of the medieval designs they mimic.
Among the cathedral's many treasures are carvings, bells, chapels and memorials to long-dead dignitaries of the British Raj. But while the building has been dubbed "the greatest shrine to the Raj in its heroic age" by Jan Morris, an acclaimed writer on British-Indian architecture, it is more than a grand imperial reliquary.
This Cathedral is very much a living church. Sunday services are packed and Mehraj receives a steady stream of parishioners seeking his guidance.
The cathedral school is also fully attended. Pakistan's Christian schools, which have educated much of the country's leadership, have an excellent reputation, and most of the school's pupils are in fact Muslim.
Mehraj said that the standard of education here reflects the building's ethos, which he sees as one of "no compromise."
Children attend school at the Cathedral Church in Lahore. Credit: Isambard Wilkinson
"The design of the building made no compromises to local conditions, except perhaps in using red brick instead of stone, which was a question of what was available locally," Mehraj said. "Even with the renovations we have carried out -- such as to the leaking roof, which was finished in 2008 -- there was no compromise to the original spirit of the design."
By contrast the writer and former Lahore resident, Rudyard Kipling, thought British buildings' lack of compromise reflected the colonists' apartness -- an architectural "shut-upness," as opposed to Eastern "spaciousness," as he put it.
Biryani on St Patrick's Day
An interior shot of St Patrick's Catholic cathedral in Karachi. Credit: Isambard Wilkinson
St Patrick's Roman Catholic cathedral in Karachi also sequesters a vibrant congregation. Made from local stone and erected in 1881 on the site of a chapel built for the Irish Catholic troops who conquered Sindh province, St Patrick's is all spires and high lancet windows.
But its design is far more dominating and proportionally solid than the aforementioned cathedral in Lahore.
Built in the high Gothic style, the church's construction echoed the growing importance of Catholics -- many of whom came from the former Portuguese colony of Goa to work on the newly arrived railway -- in Pakistan's Christian community, according to Karachi architect and heritage expert Yasmin Lari.
The building's imposing facade is utilitarian but its interior is rich with vaulting, stained-glass windows, marble paving and life-size statues that give it "color and beauty," Lari said.
