Washington National Cathedral adding engraving of Elie Wiesel

The Washington National Cathedral is set to add a sculpture of the late Holocaust survivor and renowned author Elie Wiesel to its collection of limestone carvings of cathedral leaders and national icons.

The engraving, which was completed on April 8, Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be displayed in the cathedral’s Human Rights Porch. The location also includes likenesses of leaders including Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa and Jonathan Daniels, according to The Washington Post.

“The cathedral is a 20th century cathedral, with lots of room left on purpose so we can keep lifting up those who we think live into the highest ideals of what we think it means to be a Christian, or a person of great morality and ethics,” the cathedral’s dean, the Rev. Randy Hollerith, told the Post.

“We think he is an example to the whole country of resilience, someone who dedicated his life to the highest aspirations of what it means to be a human.”

Hollerith and other cathedral leaders made the decision to include Wiesel among other engravings on the Human Rights Porch in 2019, as part of an effort to keep the building a multifaith institution. Wiesel will be the first modern Jewish person to be memorialized in the building, the Post noted.

“We wanted to be thoughtful that we not do anything inappropriate or offensive, or even come close to appropriation. We didn’t want to pretend he wasn’t Jewish, because he was. It was what made him who he was. But look at what he stood for; it crosses all religious traditions,” cathedral spokesman Kevin Eckstrom said of Wiesel.

“That no one can be indifferent to suffering, to threats of violence, of genocide, that there is a universal human mandate to always be on guard against indifference to the suffering of others.”

A 10-foot bust of Wiesel will be dedicated this fall as part of a program with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity to honor his legacy, the Post reported.

Wiesel, who died in 2016, was an author, a professor at Boston University, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and was the founding chairman of the Holocaust Museum.