The project reimagines the Co-cathedral of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, known as Baltimore Basilica, as The National Shrine of Catherin Cesnik, whose murder was covered up by the church because of her knowledge of sexual abuse within ranks.

The design rewires the logic and technologies of forensic investigation, pathology, and autopsy combining them with the aesthetics, rituals, and architectures of catholic relics to calibrate new forms of witnessing that grapple with Cesnik’s murder. It is centered on three relics designed for forensic and religious witnessing.

The relics reorganize the church around the forensic evidence discovered on Cesnk’s body which links her murder case with the sexual abuse cases in the school where Ceznik taught. Her embalmed trachea, mouth, and the maggots found within the organs are distributed along the axis of the church and preserved according to the catholic tradition and autopsy protocols. The three relics are integrated within the catholic rituals of blessing by the holy water and communion at the altar. They provide observation points for the ceremony as well as the preservation process.

The dichotomy between testimony and evidence that Cesnik’s case reveals is spatialized through the acts of religious and forensic witnessing within each relic.