Guest Article by Ishmael Obinna Adibuah
Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the Dedication of Saint Joseph Shrine in Detroit, Michigan. Since 1873, this church has been a home for those seeking to offer fitting
worship to God through the church’s perennial liturgical traditions. It is currently cared for by the
canons of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a society of apostolic life dedicated to
the celebration of the sacraments in the Extraordinary Form. In 2020, the Archbishop of Detroit
elevated the then-Saint Joseph Oratory to an archdiocesan shrine, in recognition of the church’s
rich liturgical life, artistic heritage, and superb music program.
The church, whose steeple once made it the tallest building in Detroit, was originally
built for German-speaking Catholics. Its German heritage is reflected in its Victorian Gothic
revival architecture. The first building on the site was a wooden frame church for Detroit’s
then-small German Catholic population. With the influx of more German immigrants to
Michigan in the late 1800s, this structure proved insufficient. The current church structure, built
from 1870-1873, replaced the first building.Designed by German architect Franz Georg Himpler, the church was modeled after the
Church of St. Catherine and St. Barbara in Wallerfangen, Saarland, one of Germany's smallest
states. This church building, also designed by Himpler, is in the form of a basilica – a
rectangular plan with a high nave and two lower side aisles. When he came to Detroit to design
the present Saint Joseph Shrine structure, he abandoned the basilica structure, opting for a
stepped hall with very slender clustered pillars. The nave ceilings of both churches feature
diagonally arranged cross-ribbed vaults. The steeple of the Wallerfangen church was
reinterpreted in Detroit in the neo-Gothic style, with an octagonal bell tower and spire of the
same type. Even today, the 200-foot steeple is still a feature of the Detroit skyline.
Saint Joseph Shrine is especially renowned for its stained-glass windows, some of the
oldest of their kind in the United States. It was the first church to use windows from Franz
Mayer of Munich, a German stained-glass manufacturing company. A feature of these windows
is their painterly depictions of their subjects, blending painting with glazing i.e. the Munich
style. The windows behind the High Altar are particularly noteworthy, depicting the
Consignment of the Keys to Saint Peter with four Doctors of the Church. These windows were
made in the wake of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) which defined papal infallibility. The
figures in those windows and the inscriptions below them e.g. Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia, reflected
the positive reception of this doctrine among most Catholics. The historical importance of these
windows led to the church being included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Following the liturgical changes in the 1970s, Saint Joseph Shrine maintained its
traditional customs with Ad Orientem masses in Latin. After the implementation of Pope
Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificium in 2007, the church reinstated the Traditional Latin
Mass. In 2016, after a parish merger and at the brink of closure, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron
entrusted the church to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. Since then, its number of
parishioners has quadrupled and continues to grow. Like their predecessors, the institute canons
continue to provide the sacraments according to the church’s venerable traditions, with the
shrine’s artistic beauty to complement them.
