Pope dedicates Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia

By the CNN Wire Staff

November 7, 2010 -- Updated 1104 GMT (1904 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Benedict XVI praises beauty as revealing God
• He is on his second visit to Spain as pope
• The church is still unfinished decades after the death of its architect

Barcelona, Spain (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI dedicated the Sagrada Familia church, a still-unfinished emblem of the Spanish city of Barcelona, on Sunday.

He praised its architect, Antoni Gaudi, for "overcoming the division between human consciousness and Christian consciousness, between living in this temporal world and being open to eternal life" in designing the church.

"Gaudi did this not with words but with stones, lines, planes and points. Indeed, beauty is one of mankind's greatest needs," Benedict said, speaking in Spanish.

"Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness," he said.

The pope is on his second visit to Spain, a historically Catholic country where he considers the traditional religion to be under threat.

His first stop on the two-day trip was Santiago de Compostela, in Spain's northwestern tip, an important pilgrimage site for centuries.

Pope to make his second visit to Spain

Gallery: Sagrada Familia throughout history

The cathedral there was built 900 years ago atop what is said to be the tomb of St. James, an apostle of Jesus. After praying there, the pope presided over Eucharist in the square outside, to celebrate the city's jubilee year.

"I come as a pilgrim on this Compostelean Saint Year ... I want to join to that long line of men and women that all over the centuries had come to [Santiago de] Compostela from different places on the peninsula and Europe," the pontiff said at the airport earlier in the day.

Saturday night, the pope headed all the way across Spain to Barcelona, the Catalan city on the Mediterranean.

The Sagrada Familia, or "holy family," church, is still being built after more than 100 years.

Gaudi, a Catalan architect, only lived to see one tower and most of one facade finished by the time he died in 1926.

"The interior space of the church, the sacred space of the church, is finished, and for that, the pope comes here to consecrate the church," said Jordi Fauli, the deputy architect.

Gaudi planned the church to have 18 towers -- 12 for the apostles and the tallest for Jesus.

Only eight are finished.

Fauli said the privately-financed work may be done by 2026, on the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death.

Asked once why it was taking so long to finish the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi replied, according to his assistants, "My client -- meaning God -- is not in a hurry."

CNN's Al Goodman contributed to this report.

=======================================================================