Wow Sagrada Familia Becomes the Tallest Church in the World and was Designed by a Person on the Path to Sainthood!

The Basílica and Church of the Holy Family, known as Sagrada Família, in Barcelona, Spain, has just become the world's tallest church. Itis under construction in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world. Designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), who is on the path to canonization, in 2005 his work on Sagrada Família was added to an existing (1984) UNESCO World Heritage Site, "Works of Antoni Gaudí". On 7 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica.

On October 30, the Sagrada Familia attained a height of 162.91 meters (534 feet) tall, making it the tallest church in the world. The previous record, the Ulmer Münster, a Gothic Lutheran church in Ulm, Germany, has a height of 161.53 meters (530 feet).
The 7.25-meter (23.8-foot) lower arm of the cross that was installed on Thursday arrived in Barcelona in July. Once the cross is fully completed, it will be 17 meters (55.8 feet) tall and 13.5 meters (44.3 feet) wide. The Sagrada Familia itself will have a total height of 172 meters (564 feet) when it is finally completed.
It was designed by Ven. Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), a Spanish architect who knew it would be finished long after his death. In 2023, nearly a century after his death, officials announced that the four "evangelist" towers were complete. Gaudi himself was declared venerable in 2025.
On 19 March 1882, construction of Sagrada Família began under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. In 1883, when Villar resigned, Gaudí took over as chief architect, transforming the project with his architectural and engineering style, combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms. Gaudí devoted the remainder of his life to the project, and he is buried in the church's crypt. At the time of his death in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete.
Relying solely on private donations, Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. In July 1936, anarchists from the FAI set fire to the crypt and broke their way into the workshop, partially destroying Gaudí's original plans. In 1939, Francesc de Paula Quintana took over site management, which was able to go on with the material that was saved from Gaudí's workshop and that was reconstructed from published plans and photographs. Construction resumed with intermittent progress in the 1950s. Advancements in technologies such as computer-aided design and computerised numerical control (CNC) have since enabled faster progress, and construction passed the midpoint in 2010. In 2014, it was anticipated that the building would be completed by 2026, the centenary of Gaudí's death, but this schedule was threatened by work slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2024, an updated forecast reconfirmed a likely completion of the building in 2026, though the announcement stated that work on sculptures, decorative details and a controversial stairway leading to the main entrance is expected to continue until 2034.

Sources: https://sagradafamilia.org/en/-/es-col-loca-el-primer-element-de-la-creu-a-la-torre-de-jesucrist

https://aleteia.org/2025/11/01/the-sagrada-familia-just-set-a-new-record/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia