All eyes were on Pope Francis when he visited the U.S. earlier this fall. But sharing the spotlight with the pontiff during his stop in New York City was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which officially unveiled its spectacular three-year restoration for the occasion. Overseen by the Manhattan architecture firm Murphy Burnham & Buttrick, the $177 million project reversed decades of decay and removed layers of soot darkening the Gothic Revival masterpiece, designed by James Renwick Jr. in the mid-19th century. Among the myriad updates, some 3,600 stained-glass panels were repaired and cleaned, the trompe l’oeil stonework devised by Renwick for the soaring plaster-and-lath vaults was repainted, and the overall structure was stabilized. The results are, quite simply, heavenly.