WITH KEVIN NELSON
Tuesdays at 9pm ET
Sacred places, and the stories behind them.
NEW TWO-PART EPISODE
Our Lady of Victory
National Shrine & Basilica · Lackawanna, New York
Twenty years later, Kevin Nelson goes back.
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One of the most magnificent churches in America.
In 2005, Catholic Destinations visited a basilica that seems to rise out of nowhere above the small city of Lackawanna, just outside Buffalo. Now Kevin Nelson returns for a fresh look at the shrine, and at the remarkable priest who built it.
Venerable Nelson Baker turned a struggling hilltop parish into a “City of Charity.” Two episodes tell how it began, and why his work isn’t finished.
2005
TODAY
The two-part visit
Stations, side altars and the grotto
Watch for…
The angel countNobody has an exact number. The best guess is in the thousands.
An angel on the domeA story about a worker, a fall, and one of the 18-foot angels.
Father Baker’s pillarThe one spot along the Stations where he would stop to pray, and where visitors still do.
WHO WAS FATHER BAKER?
Venerable Nelson Baker
Born in Buffalo in 1842, he was a Civil War volunteer and a grain merchant before he ever thought of seminary. He spent the rest of his life caring for orphans and the poor, and the Church has declared him Venerable.
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