World's Largest Cross?
We try to be pretty open-minded and tolerant on this website, but occasionally somebody writes to us with information that makes us gawp so much that we feel obliged to share it.
The Nativity Cross was one example in the 1990's, and a few years later the following concept appeared. But it was not much more than an idea; the actual cross was never constructed.
The idea was to build the "biggest cross in the world" at Nazareth, Israel. If built, it would have been covered by 7.2 million tiles and you could have paid to have your loved one's name engraved on one of the tiles. Each tile would have measured 2 cm x 5 cm and depending on its location on the cross would have cost between $50 and $300.
Planning approval was never sought from the municipality and since Nazareth is an architecturally-modest city with two-thirds majority Muslim residents, any application to build such a structure would certainly have raised eyebrows.
The provocative size was precisely why the Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Bishop Elias Chacour, and the Vatican's Fr. Pierre Batista, opposed the idea. Even the company behind the scheme, Nazareth Cross Church Ltd, had doubts the project would get off the ground, but they invited the public to send their money anyway.
If built, the cross would have been 60 metres high, which would not have made it the "biggest cross in the world". At Interstate 40, Groom, Texas, there's a cross standing 200 feet tall, which for the metrically challenged is 61 metres, and about 10,000 km closer to Nazareth is the Millennium Cross in Skopje at 66 metres. And let's not forget another 'biggest cross in the world' atop the Valley of the Fallen in Spain, which is more than twice the height at an incredible 150 metres.
That cross was built not only with the blessing of the State, but was actually commissioned by the State. It commemorates victims who died during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and contains the remains of 40,000 soldiers.
See Hope Cross for other money-making cross schemes.