Post to the Host:
My thoughtful husband surprised me on Christmas with tickets to your show on March 15th . I am very excited about seeing your city. But I noticed that I will be there over Holy Week! I have been trying to be a better Catholic lately (its not easy) and I hate to think that I will fall out of God's graces if I don't at least make an effort to find a church in downtown St.Paul . We will arrive Holy Thurs. and leave sometime on Palm Sunday. Can you help me out? See you soon.

Marysue from Ohio

You can either climb up the hill to the Cathedral of St. Paul or you can attend Assumption, the old limestone church with twin spires across 7th Street from Mickey's Diner (where Robert Altman filmed the first and last scenes of "A Prairie Home Companion") or you can visit the little French church on Cedar, around the corner from the Fitzgerald. You can't miss the Cathedral — Archbishop Ireland made sure of that — and it has a gorgeous interior (recently cleaned) with the Seven Virtues prominently illustrated. Assumption is a grand old church. And the French church would be very very glad to see you. Both the French church and the Cathedral are the work of the French architect Emmanuel Masqueray, a slender dapper boulevardier from Paris, who spent the first decades of the 20th Century here and made some gorgeous buildings. The style was almost outdated when he designed them and so it was St. Paul's last chance for that sort of grandeur. After him, buildings got colder and blockier. Assumption is the oldest church in Minnesota still in operation, from back in stagecoach days. And if you want to hear the Mass in Spanish, you can walk across the river and get that at Our Lady of Guadalupe. (I think. But I'm not Catholic, I am pedestrian.)