Houston's Hour

Scheduled to start at noon local time (1700UTC), H-Town's ABC affiliate KTRK will stream the three-hour Dedication Mass over the web. As if the event wasn't already feeling enough like Christmas in the South's largest local church, the coverage will feature play-by-play from the "Voice of the Vatican" Cardinal John Foley, the grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre. To enhance genuine participation from viewers far afield, a copy of tomorrow's liturgical program has been posted.
While Foley'll be holding down the commentator's booth, Cardinal Dan DiNardo will be joined in the sanctuary by around 60 other prelates and several hundred priests and deacons from the 1.5 million-member archdiocese, Texas at large and beyond.

Seven years in the making, the 1,820-seat, $64 million modern-Romanesque hub is but the latest sign of Texas Catholicism's rapid rise from Bible Belt minority to the Lone Star state's largest religious group and vanguard of the US church.
Now with its first cardinal, two archdioceses, booming churches, expanding seminaries -- and the gaze of Rome fixed squarely, and approvingly, upon it all -- it's no longer a vague, promising "future" that belongs to Rockets Country, but a confident, energetic present.

PHOTOS: Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston
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