Our Lady of Glory Church, more popularly called Gloria Church, in Byculla boasts of stained glass and particularly the birth of Jesus in a different way. At Gloria Church, one of the main panels in the sanctuary is the nativity scene. Ainsley Lewis, who is one of the architects that helped restore it along with David Cardoz in 2019, says they got all these glasses and the panel restored. It is a beautiful kind of panel, which is there, with painted glass. The artists actually paint onto the glass and fire it so that the paint gets embedded into it. 

Now decorated for Christmas, Mumbai also has Holy Name Cathedral, which is adorned with interiors that will simply grasp your attention almost immediately - right from the ceiling to the walls, including the colourful stained glass. One of the many striking features is the stained glass that may often look like a blur because of the many colours but a closer look would reveal many details.

The efforts of Lewis and Cardoz were immediately recognised and they received the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2019 for Gloria church (left). At Holy Name Cathedral (right) in Colaba, Joynel Fernandes, who is the assistant director at the Archdiocesan Heritage Museum in the Goregaon seminary, says the Nativity of Jesus is depicted beautifully. The altar depicts the birth of Jesus in three panels – with the Annunciation (left), the name of Jesus, I H S, (centre), and the beautiful birth of Jesus (right) – through its very European-inspired depiction.

In Bandra, even St Peter's Church has a depiction of the Nativity of Jesus, and Cardoz has always been fascinated about it. One of the stained-glass windows depicts the nativity scene, but that's part of the Joyful mysteries. The reason for the colourful glass, Cardoz notes, can be attributed to a Jesuit brother who went to China, and was teaching children there the art of stained glass, and brought back the colours. It is not only the churches but also the Goregaon seminary chapel, says Fernandes, that depicts the birth of Jesus Christ. It shows the life of Christ, but one of the depictions is also of the Nativity. The Mumbaikar finds the way in which Jesus has been rendered in it to be very interesting with Mother Mary and St Joseph.

It is important to know that while these are Roman Catholic churches in the city that use stained glass to depict the birth of Christ, the Afghan Church, which is an Anglican church, also depicts the birth, and can be seen at eye level. Some of the other fine examples are that of St Mary's Church (left) near Elphinstone bridge and St Thomas Cathedral in Colaba (right), that showcase the life of Jesus through different kinds of coloured glass.

Interestingly, Fernandes and Chandgadkar say that stained glass was used to not only educate people who didn't understand Latin but also those who were uneducated during the medieval times. It was around this time that the stories of the Old Testament and New Testament started getting transcribed into the glass and paintwork, says Chandgadkar. They were deliberately raised to a certain height so that people at the ground level could gaze at the teachings of the Bible in a pictorial form. In Photo: Afghan Church

More recently, Chandgadkar and Lewis have worked together to construct St Jude's Church in Malad East and use stained glass in the contemporary form. The church boasts of stained glass with the interpretation that focused on getting the idea of the stained glass; it was completed in 2019, and is quite different as compared to the churches in South Mumbai.