An influential and innovative architect of the 1930s, he chose to use reinforced concrete in religious buildings. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris and winner of the Prix de Rome, he was responsible for numerous civil buildings and designed some fifteen religious edifices, including the Church of the Holy Spirit in Paris.

A charity set up in 1931 by Cardinal Verdier, Archbishop of Paris, to build churches on the outskirts of Paris to provide local services for parishioners and, in the process, provide work for many unemployed people. Since then, more than 300 churches and parish buildings have been built.

Refers to the place where the archbishop resides as well as the territory grouping together several dioceses or bishoprics of the same region which form an ecclesiastical province placed under the jurisdiction of a metropolitan archbishop.

From the Greek, kryptein, to hide. Originally an underground place used or built as a tomb for martyrs, above which a place of worship was built. Usually located under the choir of the church, but can also be built and fitted out as a lower church, under the main building.

Otherwise known as a rectory, the residence of the parish priest or minister,

From the Greek pentêkostê, fiftieth, an event that took place fifty days after Easter and the resurrection of Christ, marking the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the birth of the Church. This gift of the Spirit was manifested ‘by fire divided into tongues’ (Acts 2, 1-14).

A solemn ceremony or rite by which a church is dedicated to the service of God as a place of worship and prayer, by placing it under the invocation of a saint and thus entering the category of the sacred

Christian theology recognises the Holy Spirit as the 3rd person of the Trinity, the mysterious reality of a single God in the loving unity of three distinct, equal and indivisible persons, the Father, the Son and the Spirit.