Basilicas in the Catholic Church

[1] Numerous basilicas are notable shrines, often even receiving significant pilgrimages, especially among the many that were built above a confessio or the burial place of a martyr; although this term now usually designates a space before the high altar that is sunk lower than the main floor level (as in the case in St Peter's and St John Lateran in Rome) and that offer more immediate access to the burial places below.

put the cathedral (or co-cathedral) of a bishop ahead of all other churches in the same diocese, even if they have the title of minor basilica.

[6] To the category major basilica belong only the four great churches of Rome, which among other distinctions have a special holy door and to which a visit is always prescribed as one of the conditions for gaining the Roman Jubilee.

The privileges attached to the status of minor basilica, which is conferred by papal brief, include a certain precedence before other churches, the right of the conopaeum (a baldachin resembling an umbrella; also called umbraculum, ombrellino, papilio, sinicchio, etc.)

Architecturally, the Papal Basilica of St Francis of Assisi is an aisleless nave with lateral chapels.

In 1999 Bishop Francesco Giogia stated that the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City (constructed in the twentieth century) was the most visited Catholic shrine in the world, followed by San Giovanni Rotondo and Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil.

[3] Ireland contains two pilgrimage basilicas: Knock Shrine and St Patrick's Purgatory (Lough Derg).

[11][12] Every year, on 13 May and 13 October, the significant dates of the Fatima apparitions, pilgrims fill the country road that leads to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima with crowds that approach one million on each day.

[16][17] St. George Forane Church in Angamaly, also of the Syro-Malabar rite, was raised to the status of basilica on 24 June 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.