00:00These fireworks celebrated the completion of a church that took nearly a century and a half to build,
00:05and it's more than twice the height of the Taj Mahal.
00:07Welcome to the Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona.
00:10As tens of thousands gathered beneath its soaring spires,
00:14Pope Leo blessed the Tower of Jesus Christ, the final and tallest central tower of the church.
00:32At 172.5 meters, it now towers above every other church in the world,
00:36completing a vision that began in 1882, 144 years ago,
00:41when electric lights were still a novelty and the automobile had not yet been invented.
00:46When the first stone was laid, Queen Victoria was on the British throne.
00:50The Wright brothers had not flown, two world wars had not yet happened,
00:53and the internet was unimaginable.
00:56And yet generation after generation kept building.
00:59Some workers laid foundations, knowing they would never see the roof.
01:02Others carved stone, knowing their grandchildren would finish the job.
01:06The church survived civil war, economic crisis, political upheaval,
01:10and even the Covid pandemic, which delayed construction.
01:13It outlived empires, dictatorships, and countless predictions that it would never be completed.
01:18At the heart of the story is one man, Anthony Gaudi.
01:21Today, he is celebrated as one of history's greatest architects.
01:25But he did not die famous.
01:26In 1926, Gaudi was struck by a tram in Barcelona.
01:30Dressed simply and carrying no signs of wealth, he was mistaken for a beggar.
01:34He died a few days later.
01:35By then, he had devoted more than four decades of his life to the Sagrada Familia
01:39and spent his final years almost entirely consumed by the project.
01:43Gaudi never expected to see the basilica completed.
01:46In fact, he famously said that his client was not in a hurry.
01:49His client, he meant, was God.
01:51That philosophy is visible in every corner of the building.
01:54Gaudi did not design a church that merely occupied space.
01:57He designed one that seemed to grow from it.
02:00Columns branched like trees.
02:02Light pours through the stained glass like sunlight through a forest canopy.
02:05The entire structure was conceived as what he called a Bible in stone.
02:09A place where architecture itself could tell stories of faith, sacrifice and hope.
02:14Gaudi deliberately made the tower shorter than Barcelona's nearby hills.
02:17He believed no human creation should surpass God's creation.
02:21So even at 172.5 meters, the church bows ever so slightly before nature.
02:27And now, exactly a century after Gaudi's death,
02:29the tallest tower has been completed and blessed.
02:32The timing feels almost poetic.
02:35Long.
Comments