# As the stool of a Bishop, the Cathedral was the location for sure liturgical rites, such as the Ordination of Priests, which brought together giant numbers of clergy & people.
# It functioned as an ecclesiastical & social meeting-place for lots of people, not those of the town in which it stood, but also, on occasions, for the whole region.
# The cathedral often had its origins in a monastic foundation & was a place of worship for members of a holy order who said the mass privately at a few small chapels within the cathedral.# The cathedral often became a place of worship & burial for rich local patrons. These patrons often endowed the cathedrals with funds for successive enlargements & building programs.
# Cathedrals are also historicallyin the past places of pilgrimage, to which people travel from afar to celebrate sure important feast days or to visit the shrine associated with a specific saint. An extended eastern finish is often found at cathedrals where the remains of a saint are interred behind the High Altar.
The term basilica, when applied to a church, may be used in ways. In architectural parlance, it signifies a building that has similarities to the basilica structures of Ancient Rome, being of longitudinal than central plan, having a central nave with an aisle on either side separated by a colonnade, & an apse at finish.
In the ecclesiastical sense, a basilica is a church that has been designated as such by the pontiff, & has accordingly received definite privileges. A building that is designated as a basilica might be a cathedral, an abbey, a shrine or a parish church. The so-called "Major Basilicas" are church buildings of Rome of 4th century foundation, St. Peter's Basilica, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore & the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. There's over one,500 church buildings in the world which are designated as �Minor Basilicas�. The reason for such a designation is often that the church is a pilgimage site & contains the relics of a saint, or an object of religious veneration, such as a fragment of the True Cross. These church buildings are often huge & of considerable architectural significance. They include the Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi; the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem; the Basilica of Our Lady of Fátima, Portugal; the Basilica of Our Lady of Sheshan, Shanghai & the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
