St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal looks like Cecil B. DeMille's idea of a cathedral. Enthroned on Mount Royal, the city's highest hill, the oratory is bigger than Notre Dame, its dome only slightly smaller than St. Peter's. It took six master architects 52 years—from 1915 to 1967—to erect, and among its accouterments are the carillon built for the Eiffel Tower, one of the world's largest organs, two wax museums, three banks of escalators, acres of free parking and a restaurant supervised by a full-time French chef.
Star of the oratory, and the subject of much of its religious chrome plating, is the...