City history: The story of Durban’s Cathedral.

It was in 1902, 116 years ago, that the French Bishop, Charles Jolivet, made his way to Natal with the vision of building a beautiful building for worship in the heart of Durban. This building would later be known as the Emmanuel Cathedral.

Back in 1880 the Empress of France began her mournful journey to the land of Natal to visit the mark where her son, The Prince Imperial, was killed in the battle of the Anglo-Zulu war.

During her visit, a hearty donation was given to a member of the clergy of St. Joseph’s to go towards the church’s funds.

With St. Joseph’s church being established in 1852 it only made sense for Bishop Jolivet to approach the members of St. Joseph’s for the Cathedral’s funding since St. Joseph’s did not have sufficient funds to build a Cathedral.

However, Bishop Jolivet was not deterred by this obstacle but rather saw it as an obstacle that he could overcome. He would spend his time pondering and wondering about how he could work around the lack of funds complicating the matter. Bishop Jolivet came up with an idea which ultimately led to the creation of Durban’s Cathedral.

Bishop Jolivet made a calculated decision to sell the St. Joseph’s church as it was known to be valuable property. Following this, the church was to be dismantled and moved to another site in the Durban area. Through this initiative there would be enough funds to provide two areas of worship in the Natal region.

The first foundations of the Cathedral were laid on the first day of the new year in 1902 and all the efforts of everyone involved paid off by the Christmas of 1903 with a couple religious celebrations taking place during the course of creating the Cathedral.

Also, with St. Joseph’s being dismantled and moved, some of the original pieces of the structure were incorporated into the Cathedral as per Bishop Jolivet’s request. That being said, the bell tower and stained glass windows from the former structure were used in the construction of Emmanuel Cathedral.

But how did this holy building get its name?

The word Emmanuel in Hebrew translates to, “God is with us” and the “Cathedra” is Latin for chair and is known as the symbol of the Bishop’s teaching authority in the Catholic church.

We hope you found this article interesting. Let us know what areas in Durban you find intriguing and what facts you know about our historic city, we would love to hear back from you!

Send your responses to siren@bluesecurity.co.za

Sources:

Emmanuel Cathedral. (2018). History. [online] Available at: http://emmanuelcathedral.org.za/history/ [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].

Stjosephdbn.co.za. (2018). St Joseph’s Parish Durban. [online] Available at: http://www.stjosephdbn.co.za/about-us.html [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].