Our Lady of the Seven Dolores - Nashville

Origin and history

The church of St. Mary of the Seven Dolores (St. Mary of the Seven Sorrows) is the oldest surviving Catholic church in Nashville and one of the first permanent temples of Catholicism in Tennessee. It was consecrated in 1848 by the Dominican bishop Richard Pius Miles, the first bishop of Nashville, as a cathedral of the newly created diocese. His dedication to the seven sufferings of the Virgin Mary - from the Prophecy of Simeon to the burial of Christ - marked from the beginning the Marian character of the Catholic community of Nashville.

The building was designed by the Prussian architect Adolphus Heiman in Greek neoclassical style, with characteristic portics of Ionian columns. During the American Civil War, the temple was set up as a hospital for soldiers on both sides. It functioned as a diocesan cathedral until 1914, when it was replaced by the Cathedral of the Incarnation; however, the parish remains active in its original location in 328 Rep. John Lewis Way N.

The image and the sanctuary

The interior houses altars of Italian marble and hand-painted frescoes in Italy in 1847, as well as the Via Cruces handmade in Czechoslovakia in 1845 - possibly the oldest in Tennessee. The church lacks columns in the ship, a remarkable architectural innovation for its time. On the side walls, the traditional attributes of the Seven Dolores of Mary - swords that pass through the Heart of the Virgin - remind the faithful of the compassionate dimension of Marian devotion.

Under the main altar rest the remains of Bishop Miles, whose body was found incorrupted in 1957, 109 years after his death; the process of beatification is under way before the Holy See.

Link to the Rosary

The devotion to the Seven Dolores is intimately linked to the spirituality of the Rosary: the contemplation of the painful mysteries goes through the same moments of suffering that tradition associates with the Virgin of the Seven Dolores. The parish today offers Mass in Latin and English with Gregorian song, maintaining the continuity of a Marian devotion that began in Nashville in 1848.