A latitude, a longitude and a radius, and the answer comes back ordered by distance with GeoJSON coordinates, the street address, the kind of building — church, chapel, basilica, shrine — and the miles to each. It is a PostGIS query over OpenStreetMap data rather than a scraped directory, so it can also be asked by name, or for everything within a diocese's boundary.
The request
curl "https://api.torchandlily.com/v1/corpus/nearby?lat=29.7604&lon=-95.3698&radius=5000&limit=3" \
-H "X-API-Key: tl_your_key_here"Every read endpoint takes the same header. Keys are free.
The response
[
{
"id": 10878,
"name": "Holy Cross Catholic Chapel",
"slug": "holy-cross-catholic-chapel-356866641",
"site_type": "CHAPEL",
"location": {
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": [
-95.3644083,
29.7573653
]
},
"osm_id": "node/356866641",
"website_url": "https://holycrosschapel.org/",
"saint_id": null,
"street": "Main Street",
"city": "Houston",
"state": "TX",
"postcode": "77002",
"phone": "+1-713-650-1323",
"diocese_id": null,
"denomination": "catholic",
"historic": null,
"distance_miles": 0.39,
"liturgies": []
},
{
"id": 11063,
"name": "Saint Josephs Catholic Church",
"slug": "saint-josephs-catholic-church-438351478",
"site_type": "CHURCH",
"location": {
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": [
-95.3731231,
29.7658592
]
},
"osm_id": "way/438351478",
"website_url": null,
"saint_id": null,
"street": null,
"city": null,
"state": null,
"postcode": null,
"phone": null,
"diocese_id": null,
"denomination": "catholic",
"historic": null,
"distance_miles": 0.43,
"liturgies": []
},
{
"id": 10936,
"name": "Cathedral Centre",
"slug": "cathedral-centre-54393271",
"site_type": "CATHEDRAL",
"location": {
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": [
-95.3673105,
29.7501132
]
},
"osm_id": "way/54393271",
"website_url": null,
"saint_id": null,
"street": null,
"city": "Houston",
"state": "TX",
"postcode": null,
"phone": null,
"diocese_id": null,
"denomination": "roman_catholic",
"historic": null,
"distance_miles": 0.72,
"liturgies": []
}
]The same response, set as a reader reads it
Within 5 km of downtown Houston, nearest first
-
Holy Cross Catholic Chapel
Main Street, Houston, TX
Chapel
0.39 mi
-
Saint Josephs Catholic Church
Church
0.43 mi
-
Cathedral Centre
Houston, TX
Cathedral
0.72 mi
Sacred sites from OpenStreetMap · /v1/corpus/search to look up by name
Build on it
The archive is public domain and the API is free to read. Sign in with Google or GitHub, mint a key, and make the call above yourself.
Responses captured 4 September 2026 · All examples