Domes

Two of Carnegie’s Eastern Rite churches look fresh and sparkling in the clear spring evening sun.

We had had heavy rains for more than a day so everything looks washed clean and the clouds are lovely. I had to do a fair amount of editing because there are traffic lights and power lines at this intersection, but well worth it; I’d been waiting for the trees to begin to bloom.

The church on the left with the gold domes is Sts. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, on the right is Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church.

My mother’s family helped to found Sts. Peter and Paul and we attended no small number of weddings and other events here along with a few memorable services. My father was Roman Catholic so along with Catholic School we went to a St. Luke’s Catholic Church, also in Carnegie, on another corner. Attendance at mass several times a week was required along with all the main holy days and Stations of the Cross, so I was no stranger to long services in a foreign language, Latin. But mass was no match for the two- to three-hour mass in the Orthodox church, especially if a wedding or funeral was involved. But the icons then were lovely, and now have been repainted by a nationally-known iconographer who lives in Carnegie and is a member of this church, and when the mass gets beyond me I can study the stories all over the walls and ceilings.

This churchis also on the national register of historic places.