For 25 years, Monsignor Robert Armstrong has called the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen home. He’s been connected to the church for much longer than that – for its full half-century. He sang in the choir for the dedication Mass in November 1959, was ordained to the priesthood in the cathedral and a quarter-century ago became its rector. But the cathedral is not his church alone.
Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien is pastor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Every bishop needs a home church, which is what a cathedral is: the place where the bishop’s “cathedra,” or chair, resides and from which he exercises his pastoral and teaching authority. Like four archbishops before him, Archbishop O’Brien has called Mary Our Queen his home church – but it does not belong only to him.
More than 1,600 families call the cathedral their home parish. For them, it is not just a place of large archdiocesan celebrations and events. It is where they experience the love of Christ in their fellow parishioners, just as each of us does in whatever parish we attend. This is their parish family, but the church does not belong only to them.
No, this church belongs to all the faithful in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The cathedral gathers people from far and wide. It is our church; it is your church.
As the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen celebrates five decades – a full rosary’s worth of years – since its formal dedication, let us join in thanking the Blessed Mother for her patronage of this great gift to our archdiocese, and ask God’s blessing on its next 50 years and beyond.