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THE NEW MEGACHURCH FOR THE SANCTUARY OF
FÁTIMA
António P. O. Carvalho, Diamantino Freitas
University of Porto, Faculty of Engineering
P-4200-465 Porto, Portugal
carvalho@fe.up.pt, dfreitas@fe.up.pt
Abstract
The Sanctuary of Fátima (Portugal) is a world known Catholic pilgrimage center
since 1917 when Holy Mary appeared to three children. The project for the 9,000-
seat church of the Most Holy Trinity is in its final stage designed by the Greek
architect A. Tombazis. This mega church will have a volume of about 130,000 m3
and an average height of 15 m with two modes of use configurations (3,000 and 9,000
seats). Its seating capacity will make it the largest church in Portugal and one of the
largest Roman Catholic churches in the world. This religious complex will also
house four smaller churches and the construction will end on 2005. This paper
presents and discusses the acoustical requirements set by the Owner's acoustical
consultant as well as the main design considerations regarding Reverberation Time,
RASTI, background noise, etc.
INTRODUCTION
The Sanctuary of Fátima (a 8,000 inhabitants town in the center of Portugal, about
120 km northeast of Lisbon, Fig. 1) is a world known Catholic pilgrimage center
since 1917 when Holy Mary appeared several times to three children shepherds (Fig.
2). Since that revelation, millions of the faithful have made pilgrimages to the site
where Our Lady of Fátima, appeared. It is now one of the greatest Marian shrines in
the world. The Roman Catholic Church recognized the Fátima events as worthy of
belief in 1930. The process of beatification of the Seers of Fátima was opened in 1952
and concluded in 1979. On 1988, the final documentation was given to the Holy
Father, John Paul II, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Meanwhile, they
were declared "venerable" by a Decree of that Sacred Congregation on 1989. On
2000 John Paul II in his trip to Fátima beatified the two "little shepherds". During the
beatification ceremony for Francisco and Jacinta the pope publicly credited Our Lady
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of Fátima for saving his life (in the 1981 assassination attempt in Rome). The last
step will be their canonization, by which they will be declared "saints".
Every year about four million persons visit Fátima and on the 13th of the
months of May to October, there are international pilgrimages that can attract up to
one million persons to the sanctuary (Fig. 3). The church that now dominates the
pilgrimage arena (built in 1953) holds only a few hundred persons and is not suited
for the majority of services that the Sanctuary needs to perform (about 2,500 masses
and 5,800 other services a year [1]). Therefore a new much larger church is needed.
Fig. 1 (left) - Map of Portugal with the location of Fátima.
Fig. 2 (right) - The three seers of Fátima in 1917 [1].
Fig. 3 - A typical May 13th pilgrimage in Fátima [1].
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THE NEW CHURCH
The project for the 9000-seat church of the Most Holy Trinity is in its final stage
designed a team headed by the Greek architect Alexandros N. Tombazis (Fig. 4 to 6).
This mega church will have a volume of about 130,000 m3 and an average height of
15 m with two modes of use configurations (3,000 and 9,000 seats). Its seating
capacity will make it the largest church in Portugal and one of the largest Roman
Catholic churches in the world. This religious complex will also house four smaller
churches and the construction will begin on October 2003 and will end on 2005.
The main dimensions of the church's interior are (approximated values):
- Surface area - 8,700 m2;
- Volume - 130,000 m3;
- Maximum height - 20 m;
- Average height - 15 m;
- Minimum height - 9 m;
- Maximum length - 95 m;
- Average length - 85 m;
- Maximum width - 115 m;
- Average width - 105 m.
The main characteristics of the church's interior are:
- Very large glassed ceiling area (with a shed-form shielded underneath with
transparent screens that allow the light to enter the nave but been
acoustically transparent to let the sound waves to reach the absorptive
material on some parts of the ceiling) - Fig. 5;
- The almost circular shape is acoustically "destroyed" by the lateral walls
(partly absorptive) - Fig. 6;
- The two modes for the church congregation area (3,000 and 9,000 persons)
are achieved by using a movable wall that rises mechanically from the
pavement (where it is "stored").
Fig. 4 - Frontal view of the new church of Fátima [2].
Fig. 5 - Interior longitudinal section of the new church of Fátima [2].
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Fig. 6 - Axonometric view (interior plan) of the new church of Fátima.
Table 1 - Sample of large churches worldwide with mean reverberation times (RT) at
500/1000 Hz, unoccupied.
Church name,
year [if 20th/21st cent.]
Town Country Seats Volume
(m3)
RT
(s)
St. Peter Basilica Rome Vatican - 700,000 7.0
The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints, 2000
Salt Lake City USA 21,000 226,000 2.0
St. Paul Outside the Walls Rome Italy - 181,000 8.6
St. Paul's Cathedral London UK - 152,000 10.7
St. John in Laterano Rome Italy - 150,000 6.2
Klosterkirche Ottobeuren Germany 130,000 6.5
Most Holy Trinity, 2005 Fátima Portugal 9,000 130,000 (2.1)
First Baptist Church, 1985 Orlando, FL USA 6,000 115,000 2.9
Monastery Santo Domingo
de Silos
Spain - 113,000 6.5
Marien church Lubeck Germany - 100,000 5.5
Basilica Mariacka Gdansk Poland - 97,000 11.4
Cathedral Dresden Germany - 50,000 7.9
Munster Weingarten Germany - 44,000 6.7
Assembly of God, 1985 Auckland New
Zealand
4,000 31,000 2.1
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ACOUSTICAL REQUIREMENTS
Comparable churches in the world
The table 1 shows a comparative analysis of several large churches in the world with
their volumes and RT mean values. As seen in that table, the new Fatima church
stands as very typical regarding its Volume and desired RT. Its interior acoustic
condition will be very distinct from almost all comparable size churches except for
the ones built in the last 20 years, where acoustic requirements where also set.
The table 1 shows only the RT mean values because it is one of the most
reliable indicators of a room's overall acoustic behavior. Other parameters can also
be very important in a specific analysis of the acoustics of this room.
Limit values
The primary acoustic concern for this church is speech intelligibility but without
putting in risk the minimum acoustical requirements concerning the music to support
the religious services.
Table 2
- Limit conditions for the acoustical requirements (
RT
and
NC
) set by the
Owner.
PARAMETERS OBJECTIVES
OF PROJECT
[
Ideal goals
]
ACCEPTABLE
LIMIT
CONDITIONS
Main church (9,000 seats mode)
RT
100% occupied (500-1k Hz)
≤
1.6 s
≤
2.0 s
100% occupied (250 Hz)
≤
2.4 s
≤
2.8 s
RT
unoccupied (500-1k Hz)
≤
2.1 s
≤
2.6 s
unoccupied (250 Hz)
≤
2.8 s
≤
3.4 s
NC
≤
25 dB
≤
30 dB
1
Main church (3,000 seats mode)
RT
100% occupied (500-1k Hz)
≤
1.5 s
≤
2.0 s
100% occupied (250 Hz)
≤
2.4 s
≤
2.7 s
RT
unoccupied (500-1k Hz)
≤
2.0 s
≤
2.6 s
unoccupied (250 Hz)
≤
2.8 s
≤
3.1 s
NC
≤
20 dB
≤
30 dB
1
1 - at least on 95% of the seats
It was decided by the Owner that this church would not be acoustically
designed mainly to music concerts or other type of public performances. For these
reasons the limit on the reverberation time value was set on the 1.6 s. This value is
supported by a large research program headed since 1991 by the Laboratory of
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Acoustics of the University of Porto Faculty of Engineering (see http://www.fe.up.pt/
~carvalho/igrejase.htm). It is a reasonable compromise (for such a large volume) for
speech intelligibility and congregational singing.
The table 2 shows the numerical main acoustical requirements with two sets of
values: objectives of project (design ideal goals), and acceptable limit conditions
(refusal threshold).
Interior Noise
The requirement for background noise within the main church was set to a maximum
NC of 25 (30 as the refusal limit) because this space can be used mainly for individual
prayer where concentration and silence is necessary.
The step no ise made by the pilgrims is also a concern in this church and
specific care is taken to control this problem mainly related to the floor covering.
Electroacoustics and multimedia
Due to the large average distances of the audience to the presbytery and the shape of
the hall, the electroacoustic sound reinforcement (PA) system design is very
demanding. Nonetheless, taking speech intelligibility as the primer concern, a lowest
RASTI limit value of 0.45 for at least 95% of the seats and a design goal value of at
least 0.50 were fixed. Having in mind the intrinsic difficulty of achieving spatial
uniformity of sound field in terms of sound pressure level at all frequencies and in
terms of STI, the interest of these limit values, however, will concern a reduced
percentage of seats. In most of the other seats, a good uniformity will be achieved.
The adopted criteria for the allowed variation range of sound pressure level in
the hall were therefore organized in two categories. The first category is an average
criterion for a wider frequency band, of interest to speech and religious music (45-
11,200 Hz), limiting the maximum deviation of the average value amongst any two
seats in the hall to a demanding design goal of 4 dB (limit of 6 dB).
As this frequency average constraint does not ensure a limit to the spot
frequency deviations, not eliminating the risk of appearance of localized effects
causing out-of-range sound pressure level values, and taking into account that these
phenomena, would be harmful mainly to speech intelligibility, a second category of
constraints was introduced, this time in reduced bandwidth, all over a speech centered
frequency range. The second category is a criterion of peak deviation of not more
than 6 dB (limit of 8 dB) between sound pressure level values in 1/3 octave bands,
also taken amongst any two seats in the hall (in the frequency range of 141-5,620
Hz). Table 3 summarizes the aforementioned basic electroacoustic criteria.
The inter-relationship between the acoustical and the electroacoustical designs
is very strong in every hall. In present-day technology, some solutions for the sound
reinforcement problem exist that in a way allow alleviating the constraints and
partially decouple the design tasks. An interesting example is the use of loudspeaker
arrays powered by digital signal processing (DSP) beamforming systems. With such
types of systems it becomes more feasible to acoustically cover, not only the most
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distant locals but also some troublesome ones in the assembly, in better conditions of
ratio of direct to reflected sound, therefore allowing better intelligibility values. In the
present project the design team adopted this approach as the technical solution.
One practical limitation of loudspeaker arrays is the limited bandwidth,
especially at low frequencies. Although this doesn’t pose problems in speech
transmission, for music it is not enough if the reproduction of orchestral material at
realistic levels is desired. The basic system will therefore be complemented with
additional devices for the purpose of eventual transmission of music. Taking in
account the specified values of RT, the need for artificial reverberation during music
transmission will be satisfied through adequate digital signal processing of the
program material.
Another technological aspect considered for the design is the virtual system
concept for the architecture of the electroacoustical system. The system will be based
on computers with virtual interface software and interface devices controlling the
whole multimedia system. The technical regie (control room) will allow full facilities
for coverage of events by the media.
Image and film projection integrated with the sound system is another valence
of the hall equipment. Multilingual sub-titling and text projection of the contents of
speech or other materials is an important resource for the international pilgrims’
comfort and an invaluable aid for those that are elder and, or, suffer from disabilities
of hearing or understanding nature. For those attendees that are hearing-aid users an
Assistive Listening System will be provided.
Table 3
- Limit conditions for the electroacoustical requirements set by the Owner
for the main church (9,000 and 3,000 seats mode).
PARAMETERS OBJECTIVES
OF PROJECT
[
Ideal goals
]
ACCEPTABLE
LIMIT
CONDITIONS
RASTI
1
≥
0.50
≥
0.45
2
∆
L mean
spectral (45-11,200 Hz)
1
(between any two seats in the congregation area)
≤
4 dB
≤
6 dB
∆
L maximum at 1/3 octave band (141-5,620 Hz)
1
(between any two seats in the congregation area)
≤
6 dB
≤
8 dB
1 - PA system; 2 - at least on 95% of the seats
Exterior Noise
One of the major acoustic concerns was the exterior environment noise that could
penetrate into the church especially because a large glass ceiling area will be used.
To check that problem measurements were held in the surrounding area where the
church will be built in several typical conditions of use. The measured results of the
environment noise levels are shown in table 4. These results were used to design the
type of windows and glass to use in the shed-form ceiling area.
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Table 4 - Exterior environment noise.
TIME PERIOD LA95 (dB) LAeq (dB) LA05 (dB)
- NIGHT TIME CONDITIONS:
standard surrounding environment 37 40 44
during main celebration in the pilgrimage area1 69 80 83
- DAYTIME CONDITIONS:
standard surrounding environment 43 49 55
during main celebration in the pilgrimage area 72 77 84
with chants/organ music in the pilgrimage area 81 85 86
church bells 66 68 69
1 only present six times per year
Objective acoustical parameters predicted values
In the final stage of the design project, the range of predicted values for the objective
acoustic parameters not listed in table 1 are shown in table 5 for several occupancy
rates. These already show that the interior conditions will be suited for the main
objective of the building: speech and religious services.
Table 5 - Predicted values (several rates of occupancy) for some objective acoustic
parameters.
OBJECTIVE ACOUSTIC PARAMETER RANGE OF PREDICTED VALUES
Center Time (TS) 100 to 120 ms
Definition (D50) 0.5 to 0.6
Clarity (C80) +1 to +4 dB
Strength (G) -5 to -10 dB
SUMMARY
The new 9,000 seats church of Fátima to be finished in 2005 will be the first mega
church in Portugal and its acoustical requirements are very stiff concerning speech
intelligibility without loosing grip to the minimum acoustical necessities for music to
support the religious services. A 1.6 s maximum RT ideal value was set (occupied).
So far, the acoustical design anticipates the fulfillment of all the main requirements.
REFERENCES
[1] http://www.santuario-fatima.pt/ [Accessed March 2003].
[2] Meletikiki - Alexandros N. Tombazis and Associates Architects Lda, design projects documents,
Polydroso, Greece, 2000.
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