Stained Glass Window Lifts Spirits At St. Francis Trauma Center Chapel

The stained glass window at the new St. Francis Medical Center expansion is something to see - so we did.

Tuesday, September 9th 2014, 6:43 pm

By: News On 6

Stained Glass Window Lifts Spirits At St. Francis Trauma Center Chapel

Saint Francis has a lot of fancy new features in their new expansion. When News On 6 reporter Allison Harris returned from the grand opening she said, "Somebody ought to do a story on the stain glass window in the new chapel."

So I did.

From outside you can see that something is there, but you have to get inside the new chapel to see exactly what.

"This window depicts the travels of St. Francis Xavier from Paris to the Far East," said Sister Barbara Anne Gooding.

Sister Barbara Anne is the Director of the Department of Religion at Saint Francis Health System. She took me on a tour of the new window.

She also clued me in on something I did not know: St. Francis Xavier is the namesake for the health system - not the other perhaps more commonly known St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis Xavier was a missionary in the 1500s, widely known in the church as the 'Apostle of the East'' and he is the patron saint of missionaries. The images in the window are of his work in India and in Japan.

"He very much wanted to go to China. He got close to China but died before he got there," Sister Barbara Anne said.

His dream of continuing his missionary work in China is depicted in the window, a purple ribbon-like image on the upper right represents the Great Wall of China.

There are more than 4,000 individual pieces of glass in the 563 square foot window. The glass comes from England, France, Germany Poland and the U.S. It is a series of panels created in a studio in Pennsylvania.

The panels were shipped here and assembled in the north wall of the chapel. There's more than half a mile of lead holding all that glass together.

It's magnificent.