Amid the chaos of Karachi’s Saddar stands an imposing architecture with towering walls, scarlet spires, arched windows, and a colossal marble monument facing it.
After General Charles James Napier’s conquest of Sindh in 1842, the number of Christians started growing in Karachi. They inevitably needed a place to worship, so Napier started a fundraising campaign and the foundation for St Patrick’s Cathedral was laid in 1878.
The design was conceived by Father Karl Wagner SJ, Brother Kluver and Brother Jau of the Society of Jesus. It was built in the Indo-Gothic style with Gizri stone and became the first church in the subcontinent to be used as a model for such style.
St Patrick’s is the only cathedral in Pakistan with stained-glass windows, which are found across Europe and America. These windows were imported from Germany.
The Christ the King monument was elevated in front of the main building in 1931, nearly half a century after the cathedral was constructed. It features soaring pillars arranged in a semicircle with gleaming white marble sculptures. The monument was built to honour the memory of Jesuit Mission in Sindh.
The cathedral was opened in 1881 and can accommodate nearly 1,500 worshipers.
