Jakarta Cathedral

About

Set in the heart of Jakarta near Merdeka Square, the cathedral takes its official name from the Indonesian Gereja Santa Perawan Maria Diangkat ke Surga, the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary taken up into Heaven. As the mother church of the Archdiocese of Jakarta it bears the cathedra of the archbishop.

The building is a striking example of late-nineteenth-century neo-Gothic, raised on a Latin cross plan with narthex, nave, transepts, and apse to the east. Two slender western spires rise sixty metres above the entrance: the Turris Davidica, honoured as the Tower of David in the Marian tradition, and the Ivory Tower, evoking the purity of the Mother of God. A third spire of forty-five metres, the Tower of the Angelus Dei, stands above the crossing.

At the trumeau of the main portal stands a statue of Our Lady, with the inscription from the Magnificat above her. A great rose window, the Rozeta Rosa Mystica, takes its name from another Marian title. The triforium gallery now houses the Jakarta Cathedral Museum, where vestments, chalices, and the history of the Indonesian Catholic Church are gathered.

The cathedral stands beside Istiqlal Mosque, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, with a pedestrian tunnel between them completed in 2021 as a sign of friendship between the two communities.

History

Catholic worship was severely restricted under the Dutch East India Company. With the opening of religious freedom in the Dutch East Indies in the early nineteenth century, a first Catholic church in Batavia was inaugurated on 6 November 1829 under the name Our Lady of the Assumption, set in a renovated colonial residence in Weltevreden.

This early church was renovated in 1859 but collapsed on 9 April 1890. The present cathedral was raised between 1891 and 1901, with the Jesuit Father Antonius Dijkmans as the original architect and the work resumed and simplified from 1899 by Marius Hulswit, who introduced cast-iron spires to allow the church to be completed by local builders. The cathedral was solemnly blessed by Mgr Edmundus Sybrandus Luypen, SJ on 21 April 1901, and underwent a careful restoration between 1988 and 2002.