Templo Santísimo Redentor, Cuauhtémoc

The Templo Santísimo Redentor, the Holy Redeemer Church, is in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood. Nearly on the border with San Rafael, to the north and east, it’s one of those jaw-dropping 20-century churches. Purely secular visitors, too, would love to know more about it.

This church was designed and built by the engineer José Fernández Cangas (1927-2012). He was primarily an academic engineer who taught for many years at the La Salle University in Mexico City. The project lasted from 1962 through 1964. Work finished with the installation of outstanding stained-glass by the acclaimed Kitzia Hofmann. She decorated many of the most important churches of the 20th century in Mexico and the United States.

Both the 1985 and the 2017 earthquakes damaged the church. Parishioners lovingly restored its simple, dramatic series of arches.

• Across the street from the church, the Olof Palme Park is named for Swedish politician and statesmen, Sven Olof Joachim Palme. Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986. He was a strong voice of restraint and reason during many of the tensest moments of the Cold War.

Redemptorists

This temple is the Parish church for the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. In English, they’re better known as the  Redemptorists. The congregation was founded by Alphonsus Liguori in 1749 to work among the peasantry outside of Naples in Italy.

The Redemptorists congregation especially devote themselves to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Usually depicted as a Byzantine icon, in 1865, Pope Pius IX named the congregation as custodians. The original has been enshrined at the Redemptorist Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori in Rome.