The Cathedral of Jinotega

The Church pictured above is a picture of St. John´s Cathedral in the city of Jinotega nestled beautifully within a mountainous valley. As is Nicaraguan custom, the Church dwarfs most modern Catholic Churches in  size and magnitude. One neat feature that we saw was that the Adoration Chapel was just to the right of the Church:

With such a design on it´s front gate, it´s easily notable who occupies the other side

The main aisle and nave are simply stunning. Running the course from enterance to the altar with columns rounded off by archs, in essence, creating a huge open expanse for the worship of the Lord:

An interesting thing about the way this church was built is that it resemples the classic basillica layout, that is, when the aisle meets the altar, there are two adjacent areas on either side of the altar. To the left we there was an area devoted to Our Lady of Guatalupe and to the right of the altar, there was the Most Blessed Sacrament for the faithful to pray and be with our Lord.

The faithful few spending time with our Lord.

A close up of the pulpit in front of the altar

The strangest thing that I noticed was a display of Christ in His passion underneath the altar. At first it was kind of weird but then I thought to my self, where else would the sacraficial Lamb of God be other than at the altar, right? And then I remembered Revelation 5:6 in which John sees a "lamb as though it were slain" and it is from the bottom of an alter that the martyrs cry out for vengence in Revelation 6:9-10. Pretty powerful stuff, its not hard to see how it is that we Catholics use ALL of our senses when we [truly] worship:

Seen here is a dipiction of Christ, presumable at His Scorging at the pillar during His Passion

Another thing of note is that all these older churches also have the old school confessionals at the sides of the church, I don´t know, but having an all white interior bathed by outside sunlight doesn´t allow for much privacy! Oh well, it´s not like He doesn´t already know you want reconciliation, right?