Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians

The Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Shillong which covers the Khasi andJaintia hills of Meghalaya.The first church built at the site in 1913 was the wooden Church of the Divine Saviour, destroyed in a fire on Good Friday on 10 April 1936. Built by the first Catholic missionaries to these hills, the Salvatorians from Germany (of the Society of the Divine Saviour), it was the first Catholic Cathedral Church in what was then the Mission of Assam. Construction of the new church of Mary Help of Christians was begun on the same site on 25 October 1936. Since the region where the cathedral is built is prone to earthquakes, sand was filled into trenches cut into the rock and the structure was built above this in order to make it earthquake-resistant