captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> kroft: with american health care costs so out of control, we were stunned to hear from former doctors and administrators at one of the nation's largest hospital chains that they had been pressured to admit patients regardless of medical need to increase revenues. >> this is coming from a non-physician, somebody who never went to medical school, never seen or treated a patient, is telling a physician how they should be taking care of a patient and making decisions related to a patient. and my blood pressure is going up just saying that. >> pelley: this is where you grew up? >> in a public housing project. ( speaking spanish )

>> welcome to your old neighborhood. >> gracias. >> pelley: supreme court justice sonia sotomayor's parents came from puerto rico. she and her little brother were raised in public housing in the bronx, new york, where she was laying down the law even then. your brother told us that more than once in this neighborhood he got beaten up. >> and more than once, i beat up the person who beat him up. ( laughing ) >> pelley: so how did she move from this neighborhood to this one? that's our story tonight. >> logan: when pope benedict xvi came to the sagrada famiília two years ago, he consecrated the church as a basilica. not since 1883, when it was first envisioned by antoni gaudií, had it been seen in all its glory. >> he wanted to write the history of the whole of the catholic faith in one building. i mean, how crazy and how

extraordinary and how ambitious that idea is. ( bells tolls ) >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm leslie stahl. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm lara logan. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on "60 minutes." i am an american success story. i'm a teacher. i'm a firefighter. i'm a carpenter. i'm an accountant. a mechanical engineer. and i shop at walmart. truth is, over sixty percent of america shops at walmart every month. i find what i need, at a great price. and the money i save goes to important things. braces for my daughter. a little something for my son's college fund. when people look at me, i hope they see someone building a better life. vo: living better: that's the real walmart. i'm very excited about making the shrimp and lobster pot pie. we've never cooked anything like this before. [ male announcer ] introducing red lobster's

seaside mix & match. combine any 2 of 7 exciting choices on one plate for just $12.99! like new cheddar bay shrimp & lobster pot pie, and new parmesan crunch shrimp. plus salad and unlimited cheddar bay biscuits. combine any 2 for just $12.99. [ stewart ] for the seaside mix & match, we're really mixing it up. there's just so many combinations to try. i'm stewart harrington, red lobster line cook, and i sea food differently. i'm stewart harrington, red lobster line cook, the blisters were oozing, and painful to touch. i woke up to a blistering on my shoulder. i spent 23 years as a deputy united states marshal and i've been pretty well banged up but the worst pain i've experienced was when i had shingles. when i went to the clinic, the nurse told me that it was a result of having had chickenpox. i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. one more time, just for themselves... before the last grandchild graced the stage,

before katie and her husband hit that rough patch... before kevin finally came home and the first grandchild arrived, before the sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and brad's brief brush with the law... man: smile. before the second british invasion... before katie, debbie, kevin, and brad... there was a connection that started it all and made the future the wonderful thing it turned out to be. we know we're not the center of your life, but we'll do our best to help you connect to what is.

>> kroft: if you want to know why health care costs so much in this country, consider this: it's estimated that $210 billion a year, about 10% of all health expenditures, goes towards unnecessary tests and treatments, and a big chunk of that comes right out of the pockets of american taxpayers. last december, we reported on the admission and billing practices of health management associates. it's the fourth largest for- profit hospital chain in the country with revenues of $5.8 billion last year, and nearly half of that came from medicare and medicaid programs. we talked to more than 100 current and former employees, and we heard a similar story over and over; that h.m.a.

relentlessly pressured its doctors to admit more and more patients regardless of medical need in order to increase revenues. health management associates owns 71 hospitals in 15 states. it's thrived buying small, struggling hospitals in non- urban areas, turning them into profit centers by filling empty beds. generally speaking, the more patients a hospital admits, the more money it can make, a business strategy that h.m.a. has aggressively pursued. did you feel the hospital was putting pressure on doctors to admit people? >> nancy alford: yes. >> kroft: for what reason? >> alford: money. >> kroft: you're sure of that? >> alford: uh-huh. >> kroft: until she was fired, nancy alford was the director of case management at the h.m.a. hospital in mesquite, texas, where she oversaw the auditing of patient records and signed off on the accuracy of bills sent to medicare and medicaid. she'd never met former h.m.a.

doctors jeff hamby, cliff cloonan and scott rankin until we brought them together in new york to discuss their experiences at h.m.a. >> scott rankin: what's really remarkable is, we're from very different areas of the country, yet the pressures placed upon the emergency physicians and the mechanism in place to enforce those procedures and policies-- exactly the same. >> kroft: cliff cloonan is a retired colonel who spent 21 years as an army doctor before joining the carlisle regional medical center in pennsylvania as the assistant emergency room director. dr. scott rankin worked in the same department. both say they were told by h.m.a. and its e.r. staffing contractor, emcare, that if they didn't start admitting more patients to the hospital, they would lose their jobs. >> cliff cloonan: my department chief said, "we will admit 20% of our patients or somebody's going to get fired." >> kroft: what's wrong with admitting 20%? >> rankin: in a relatively

rural, limited-resource community hospital, your admission rate out of the emergency department, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%. >> kroft: and they wanted 20%? >> rankin: correct. they wanted 20%. >> cloonan: there's no way you can do that and not have it be fraudulent because you're not admitting on the basis of medical requirements, you're basing it... it on strictly an arbitrary number that has been pulled out. >> kroft: all sorts of businesses set quotas. what's wrong with this? >> rankin: we're not building widgets. we're taking care of patients who are ill and come in to the emergency department. >> kroft: jeff hamby was an emergency room doctor at h.m.a.'s summit medical center in northwest arkansas. he says he was fired for not meeting admission targets and is suing h.m.a. for wrongful termination. h.m.a. maintains no one has ever been fired over admission numbers. hamby called the targets "coercion to commit fraud." >> jeff hamby: initially, it was 15%. they kept trying to up it. >> kroft: they didn't care how you got there? they just wanted you... >> hamby: wanted us to hit the benchmark, arbitrary benchmark. >> kroft: they're saying, "you

will admit these people, whether they're sick or not, whether they need to be hospitalized?" >> hamby: correct >> alford: uh-huh. >> cloonan: they never phrase it that way. they did say "admit 20%." the reality of that is that there's only one way that that can happen, and that is if it is arbitrary. that is, if you do admit patients that don't need to be admitted. >> rankin: for patients who were 65 and over, the benchmark was 50%. >> kroft: those would be medicare patients? >> rankin: correct. >> kroft: and you're saying it's not a good idea to admit half the patients over 65? >> cloonan: if you are put into the hospital for reasons other than a good, justifiable medical reason, it puts you at significant risk for hospital- acquired infections and what we would refer to as "medical misadventures." >> kroft: these stories are echoed in many of the thousands of documents we examined, including emails like this one from a hospital executive in durant, oklahoma, pressuring her staff during emergency room shifts. "only 14 admits so far!

act accordingly." and this e-mail from an e.r. director at an h.m.a. hospital in south carolina to a new emergency room doctor. "every time a 65-year-old or older comes in, i am already thinking, 'do they have some condition i can admit them for?'" "we are under constant scrutiny. i'll be blunt, i have been told to replace you if your numbers do not improve." in your dealings with h.m.a., did you ever get any sense that this was commercially driven? >> hamby: of course. i can't imagine any other explanation to admit a percentage. >> alford: the administrators said that daily, frequently. "you know, we don't make any money if we do this. we make more money if we do that." >> kroft: admit more patients? >> alford: admit more patients, keep them longer. money was the chief motivator. >> kroft: you're all saying this was codified, institutionalized at h.m.a.? >> rankin: absolutely, this was... this was a well thought- out plan.

and it even relates to how they had control over us as emergency physicians. >> kroft: that control, they say, was exerted with corporate- wide computer software called promed which was installed in every emergency room. h.m.a. says it was designed and approved by medical experts to improve the quality of patient care. but doctors, nurses, emergency room directors and hospital administrators told us that h.m.a. customized the program to automatically order an extensive battery of tests, many of them unnecessary, as soon as a patient walked into the emergency room. >> hamby: the minute the chief complaint and their age was placed into that computer, that system ordered a battery of tests that was already predetermined. >> rankin: and this was prior to being seen by the treating physician. and we would look at the chart and say, "why was all this ordered?" >> kroft: the computer program also generated printed reports like this one evaluating each doctor's performance and productivity. on this document, the doctors

who hit corporate admissions goals received praise from company managers; those who didn't knew it. >> cloonan: the primary purpose of the scorecard was to track how you were doing in terms of revenue generation based on number of tests ordered and number of patients admitted to the hospital. >> rankin: it has nothing to do with patient safety and patient care. it has everything to do with generating revenues. >> kroft: they say that when a doctor decided to send an emergency room patient home, the computer would often intervene, prompting the doctor to reconsider. >> hamby: the minute i hit "home," it says, "qual check." and then it comes up with a warning: "this patient meets criteria for admission. do you want to override?" >> kroft: what was the reaction from the administrators if you overrode the computer? >> hamby: it was like being called to the principal's office. >> cloonan: mind you, this is coming from a non-physician, somebody who never went to medical school, never did a residency-- frankly, has never seen or treated a patient-- is telling a physician how they should be taking care of a

patient and making decisions related to a patient. and my blood pressure's going up just saying this. >> kroft: in august, a former executive vice president of the hospital chain, john vollmer, testified under oath in a deposition that h.m.a.'s aggressive admission policies came directly from the top, c.e.o. gary newsome. >> john vollmer: mr. newsome's thought was that an average of 16% was accomplishable at all hospitals, or more, and we should seek to do that and make that happen. >> kroft: vollmer, who was also fired by h.m.a., became angry when the company lawyers challenged him. >> vollmer: i did my duty by informing h.m.a. that what they are doing is wrong. you can't require them all to have 16% admission rates and beat up doctors and administrators and all these folks over it when you are doing it to increase your revenue for the facility. >> i'm going to move to strike what you just said.

>> kroft: we wanted to talk with gary newsome, health management associate's c.e.o., but instead, we were given h.m.a. executive vice president alan levine, who joined the company just two years ago. levine says the allegations are coming from disgruntled employees. and if they were true, he said, it would be reflected in the admissions data. he says admission rates haven't changed in four years and are near or below industry averages. the allegations have to do with you taking people who shouldn't be admitted to the hospital and putting them in the hospital. >> alan levine: those allegations are absolutely wrong. >> kroft: h.m.a. doesn't set quotas for hospital admissions. >> levine: no. >> kroft: h.m.a. never told emergency rooms that they needed to admit a certain percentage of people that came in? >> levine: we tell them collaboratively that our goal is to make sure the patient gets in the right setting. it... we don't want a patient going home that should be admitted. we don't want a patient admitted that shouldn't be admitted. >> kroft: i've got some documents here from durant, oklahoma. we showed levine this physician

performance review from the h.m.a. hospital in durant, oklahoma, which had been given to us by a doctor there. it prominently shows an admission goal of 20%. it says there on the right hand side, "goal, 20%." and it shows the lights. the reds show people who are not actually meeting their goal. >> levine: well, first of all, i've never seen this document, so i can't... i mean, you... the... i can tell you right now, as a company... well, there's a lot of things on this form, steve. we look at testing guidelines. there's a lot of quality metrics on here, steve. we measure all of this stuff... >> kroft: yeah, but there... we have here one whole column, "goal." >> levine: that's not... >> kroft: "goal." >> levine: that's not... that's not from our company, steve. i don't know where that came from. >> kroft: it's not from your company? it's... i don't... one of your hospitals. >> levine: steve, we don't have any kind of goals. i don't know what the percent admissions are at that hospital. maybe they are actually 20%, but

the... the admissions goal at any hospital is driven only by what the normal trend is for that hospital. >> kroft: we talked to a hundred people who say that there was pressure from the corporate level to admit people. are they all lying? >> levine: steve, we have one goal. and... and... and i'm not going to... i'm not... i'm not going to judge anybody else. our goal is... each and every patient that comes into the hospital is a unique and special circumstance. >> kroft: we weren't the first to raise the subject of inappropriate admissions with corporate executives. paul meyer raised the allegations several years ago. at the time, he was director of compliance with h.m.a., charged with inspecting and auditing its hospitals to make sure they were following state and federal laws. meyer is a former 30-year veteran of the f.b.i., whose last assignment had been supervising medicare fraud in miami before he joined h.m.a.

h.m.a. has said that their admission policies are designed to improve the quality of care for the patients. do you believe that? >> paul meyer: based on my experience, i... i can't believe it. >> kroft: what do you think they're based on? >> meyer: i think they're based on profit. >> kroft: meyer says he reached that conclusion in 2010 after hearing complaints from emergency room doctors, case workers and hospital administrators. they said they were being pressured to fill beds with people who did not need to be admitted to the hospital. meyer says he audited four hospitals in texas, florida and oklahoma, and concluded that h.m.a. had intentionally billed medicare and medicaid for hundreds of thousand of dollars in inappropriate hospital stays that did not meet government standards for admission or reimbursement. did you think it was medicare fraud? >> meyer: yes. it was medicare fraud. simple as that. >> kroft: why was it medicare fraud? >> meyer: they're submitting bills to the government for the

admission of patients. the patients didn't meet the appropriate prescribed criteria for admission and for the hospitals to bill medicare for the admissions. it's... it's a... a false billing, if you will. >> kroft: if you'd been at the f.b.i. and somebody came in and handed you all of this stuff, would you have pursued a criminal investigation? >> meyer: yes. no doubt about it. >> kroft: meyer said he told the same thing to corporate officials and wrote up his findings in three memos to top management. >> meyer: i made sure that i spoke with the c.e.o. face to face about this, that something is really, really wrong and it's got to be addressed. i had indicated that "if it's not addressed by you all, then i'll have to handle it getting addressed by the government." >> kroft: what was their response? >> meyer: had another job change. >> kroft: meyer says h.m.a.'s corporate attorneys heavily edited his reports and instructed him to destroy the original version of his memos, but he never did.

>> meyer: i felt it was evidence. these people are changing my write-up of what i found, softening it up, excising out things, labeling it as attorney/client privilege when it wasn't. and i felt certain they're trying to cover this up. >> kroft: he was eventually fired and is now suing h.m.a. for wrongful termination. what are we supposed to make of... of these allegations that have been raised by... by paul meyer? he says this company's guilty of medicare fraud. >> levine: well, we'll let... we'll let the proper authorities be the judge of that. okay, we feel that we are doing the right thing for our patients. it's not mr. meyer's place to decide guilt or innocence. we investigate anything that's reported. and if we find a problem, we... we fix it. >> kroft: h.m.a. says it hired an outside law firm to investigate meyer's allegations and that there was no finding that would support an allegation of fraud, adding that any overpayments from medicare and medicaid were rectified. but paul meyer is the least of h.m.a.'s problems right now.

the hospital chain is currently under investigation by the justice department and the securities and exchange commission. h.m.a. says it's cooperating with those investigations. since our story first aired, h.m.a.'s hospital admissions have declined, along with its corporate profits; and c.e.o. gary newsome has announced that he is leaving the company. my name is dan and this is my aha moment. i was severely wounded in combat in iraq in 2004. and then i said, to myself, i think it's time to help the next guy. so i stopped what i was doing and went to work for wounded warrior project. i can show that new guy, hey, that's it's going to be ok. like, i'm climbing mount kilimanjaro in august.

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and when we aired this story in january, she was about to come out with a memoir of the same name. she told us that the neighborhood gave a poor girl with a serious illness a chance to serve and an opportunity to become one of the most powerful women in america. this is where you grew up? >> sonia sotomayor: in a public housing project. i lived in this one on the corner. hold on. hola. ¿como estas? >> welcome to your old neighborhood. >> sotomayor: gracias. >> kroft: you could believe she never left. they remember, and she's never forgotten. seems the only difference is the security detail, which she really never needed in the bronx. you know, your brother told us that, more than once in this neighborhood, he got beaten up. >> sotomayor: yep. and more than once, i beat up the person who beat him up. ( laughter ) >> pelley: you stood up for your brother. >> sotomayor: oh, you asked me the other day if i was a tough cookie and...

( laughs ) >> pelley: a tough cookie who never crumbled at a setback. >> sotomayor: i am the most obstinate person you will ever meet. i have a streak of stubbornness in me that i think is what has accounted for some of my success in life. there is some personal need to persevere, to fight the fight, and if you just try and be stubborn about trying, you can do what you set your mind to. >> pelley: sonia sotomayor set her mind to being a judge at the age of ten, and three presidents agreed. appointed to a federal court by the first george bush, she was promoted to the appeals court by bill clinton, and, in 2009, selected for the supreme court by president obama. your first day working here, terrifying? >> sotomayor: overwhelmingly terrifying.

( laughs ) i was so nervous that day that my knees knocked, and i thought everybody in the court room could hear them knocking. >> pelley: well, come on. you'd been a federal judge for more than 15 years at that point. >> sotomayor: i had not been a supreme court justice. it's a very different stage. >> pelley: on this stage, she's one of the most vocal questioners. and her vote most often falls on the liberal side. she helped uphold the health care act and strike down tough illegal immigration statues. back in the bronx, as a girl, she set her heart on being a cop, inspired by nancy drew novels and tv. but by the age of eight, the plot of her life was rewritten by diabetes. the doctors told you because of your type 1 diabetes... >> sotomayor: type 1 diabetes. at any rate... >> pelley: ...you couldn't be a cop. >> sotomayor: yes, i couldn't be a cop. i figured out very quickly, watching perry mason, that i could do some of the same things by being a lawyer. >> objection!

>> pelley: so, we are sitting in the supreme court today because you read nancy drew and watched perry mason on tv? >> sotomayor: that's exactly right. ( laughs ) >> pelley: her body would forever be dependent on insulin, but her ambitions were set free. >> sotomayor: i had a life in which i was in a hurry. >> pelley: how long did you expect to live? >> sotomayor: at that time, it was not unusual for most juvenile diabetics to die in their forties. >> pelley: and this was hanging over you, this was something you thought about? >> sotomayor: oh, i thought about it a lot. and i got in as much as i could do at every stage of my life. i studied very hard. i partied very hard. i love playing very hard. and i did it all to try to pack in as much as i could. >> kroft: did she ever. honors in catholic high school led to a scholarship to princeton. top honors there led to law at yale, and then straight to new york as a prosecutor.

the pay was lousy, the hours inhuman. she was smoking three and a half packs a day, listening to victims, sending thieves and killers to prison and learning something about people. >> sotomayor: they can be evil. i don't know that, before i came to the d.a.'s office, that i understood that there were some people who were that bad. it's one of the reasons i left the d.a.'s office, because that lesson made me realize that if i stayed in the practice of criminal law, i might lose some of my optimism about human nature. >> pelley: are some people beyond redemption? >> sotomayor: people do some very bad things that are still human beings with some redeeming qualities. they can do some horrible things, but they're still valuable human beings in other ways. but yes, i do believe there are some people who are evil and perhaps can't be redeemed.

>> pelley: after four years with the d.a. and the end of her marriage to her high school sweetheart, sotomayor cleared her mind and the air. she quit smoking and joined a firm practicing corporate law, where some of the men didn't seem all that comfortable with her. you write in your book that, one day, one of the associates, one of your colleagues was on the telephone, and he described you- - your words, not mine-- as.. >> sotomayor: his words. >> pelley: ...as "one tough bitch." >> sotomayor: yeah. ( sighs ) >> pelley: and when you heard that, you thought what? >> sotomayor: what in the world is wrong with me? i was a pretty tough negotiator and hard to push around. and i don't think they were used to my kind of toughness, then. >> pelley: is his description in

any way unfair? >> sotomayor: probably not. >> pelley: she's been called a lot of things, but she told us, more than "madam justice," she prefers another title. >> sotomayor: it's "sonia from the bronx." >> pelley: what does it mean to be sonia from the bronx? >> sotomayor: it means to be a part of this particular community... how are you? ...a vibrant, loving, giving community. and it's something very special. >> pelley: the bronx of her childhood was a place where immigrants got a foothold on the dream. it's a picture she paints in the memoir "my beloved world," and a life she lives today. you'll find her with the bronx bombers in yankee stadium, and at the annual "dream big" celebration thrown by the bronx children's museum. >> sotomayor: don't ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop

trying. there's courage in trying. >> pelley: why is it important to you? >> sotomayor: kids are important to me. i want one of the hallmarks of my tenure to be that i gave something to kids, that i gave something to our future. >> pelley: her own inspiration was her mother, celina sotomayor, who would end up raising the children mostly alone. your father was an alcoholic? >> sotomayor: he was. >> pelley: did you understand what that meant as a child? >> sotomayor: no. i had sort of a childlike appreciation that he couldn't help himself. i also watched him die from drinking. >> pelley: he died when she was nine. her mother pushed education, and in 1972, sotomayor was near the top in her high school class when she got an offer from a university she had never heard of, princeton.

it was a combination of talent, perseverance and affirmative action. do you think anyone ever resented the notion that you might have had a door opened for you by affirmative action? >> sotomayor: you can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action. from the first day i received, in high school, a card from princeton telling me that it was possible that i was going to get in, i was stopped by the school nurse and asked why i was sent the "possible" and the number one and the number two in the class were not. now, i didn't know about affirmative action. but from the tone of her question, i understood that she thought there was something

wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students. >> pelley: now, essentially, the same question that the nurse asked is before sotomayor on the court. a white student has filed suit saying that affirmative action kept her out of the university of texas. you have declined to talk to us about cases before the court, whether they're before the court currently or have already been ruled on by the court, and i wonder why. >> sotomayor: people sometimes don't understand that judges can have personal experiences, even personal opinions, but i think that if you talk publicly about those things that people will jump to the conclusion that you've already made up your mind in some way. >> pelley: on affirmative action, her "personal experience" has been powerful. is there a role for it today?

>> sotomayor: the affirmative action of today is very different than it was when i was going to school. and each school does it in a different way. i can't pass judgment on whether there's a role for it or not without it being seen as i'm making a comment on an existing case. but i do know that, for me, it was a door-opener that changed the course of my life. >> pelley: what never changed was diabetes, but it hasn't slowed her down. she tests her blood and takes insulin when and where she needs to. in her chambers, you hear spanish in the air. and it was here that we met a woman of great ambition, but even she, celina sotomayor, had to be amazed that this was her daughter's office and that she would hold the bible at the swearing in of a justice. >> celina sotomayor: i didn't have to do anything. i just taking the... the...

taking glory for that. but it had nothing to do with it. >> pelley: i suspect you may have had something to do with it along the way. ( laughter ) >> sonia sotomayor: i think my mom is too fond of not taking enough credit. >> celina sotomayor: sonia, you always were in charge. ( laughter ) >> pelley: justice sotomayor was in charge of delivering the oath to the vice president during january's inauguration. it had been 40 years since that high school nurse asked why princeton had picked sonia from the bronx. >> sonia sotomayor: and the memory of it has really never left me because it is the look that so many people give you. it's the look that i was still receiving when i was nominated to the supreme court. "was i capable enough?" we have to prove ourself, and we have to work hard at doing it.

>> pelley: that's where the stubbornness comes from. >> sotomayor: that's where the stubbornness comes from. for me, at least, it's the stubbornness to say, "i'm going to do it, and i'm going to do it well." >> pelley: a ruling on that affirmative action case is expected from the court this month. >> welcome to the cbs sports update presented by pfizer. harris english won by two shots to capture his first career pga tour win. phil mickelson shot a final round 67. he finished tied for secondment at the french open in paris, raphael nadal won in straight sets over david ferrer capturing his eighth career french open title. for more sports news and information, go to cbssports.com.e hands, for holding.

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>> logan: before stepping down as pope earlier this year, benedict xvi carried out thousands of official duties over eight years, but only once did he travel outside rome to bestow the vatican's highest honor on a church, transforming it into a basilica, a sacred place forever. tonight, we're going to take you to that extraordinary church. it's called the sagrada famiíli, and, if you've ever been to barcelona, spain, you couldn't have missed it. it may be one of the most spectacular buildings ever constructed by man, the vision of genius spanish architect

antoni gaudií, known as god's architect, who died almost a century ago. it's been under construction for 130 years, and it's still not finished. why would a church take so long to build? because, as we first reported in march, gaudií's design was as complicated as it was advanced. today, the sagrada famiília has become the longest running architectural project on earth. when pope benedict came to the sagrada famiília two years ago, it was the first time mass had ever been held here. in an ancient tradition as old as the catholic church, he consecrated the sagrada famiília as a basilica. not since 1883, when it was envisioned by antoni gaudií, had it been seen in all its glory.

800 voices filled the air, one of the largest choirs in the world, and close to 7,000 people gathered, celebrating a moment that had taken 128 years to arrive. while the inside is mostly finished, outside, there's still much to be done. you can see the spires and construction cranes for miles. watch as this picture moves in from above-- those tiny figures below are people dwarfed by the massive facçade rising from the main entrance of the church. antoni gaudií was profoundly devout, and this was his way to make amends to god for the sins of the modern world. >> gijs van hensbergen: i mean,

he wanted to write the history of the whole of the catholic faith in one building. i mean, how crazy and how extraordinary and how ambitious and how, in a sense, megalomaniac that idea is. >> logan: gijs van hensbergen immersed himself in antoni gaudií's life for ten years and wrote what's considered the definitive biography. he took us to see the nativity facçade, the only part built while gaudií was alive. >> van hensbergen: it's the bible written in stone. >> logan: so, every single little thing that you look at there, every detail symbolizes something real? >> van hensbergen: yeah, and that was the idea, that we together would spend days here-- me teaching you, if i was a priest, what the story was, and what the symbolism was. and once you get inside is a wonderful, kind of spiritual boost. ♪ ♪ >> logan: the ceiling is a

striking display of gaudií's engineering genius. he wanted the interior of his church to have the feel of a forest, because that's where he believed man could feel closest to god. and when you look upwards, you can see gaudií's columns branching out like trees. >> van hensbergen: trees are actually buildings, he said. it knows where to throw out a branch. and if you look at the sagrada famiília today, that's exactly what happens with those bizarre, eccentric... they look bizarre and eccentric, but the engineering beneath it is absolutely exceptional. >> logan: van hensbergen pointed out that, as you move towards the altar, the columns are made from stronger and stronger stone. gaudií chose red porphery from iran for the ones that bear the heaviest load, because it's among the strongest in the world. if you had to define, sort of, the one thing that distinguished gaudií as an architect, what would it be? >> van hensbergen: the capacity

to see space in a totally different way, to make space explode, to see a building as a sculpture rather than just as a place to live in or a roof over your head. he's someone who reinvented the language of architecture, which no other architect has ever managed to do. >> logan: how many years ahead of his time was he? >> van hensbergen: oh, he was a century ahead, he was a century ahead. >> logan: gaudií knew the sagraa famiília would not be completed in his lifetime, so he spent years building these elaborate plaster models. this one is of the church's ceiling. they would have to act as a guide for future generations of architects to follow his complicated design, and he knew that, without them, it would never be finished the way he intended. >> jordi bonet: i am very old, but... >> logan: you're very old? >> bonet: this next month, yes. >> logan: but? >> bonet: 87. >> logan: gaudií's legacy has been in the hands of this man's family for more than 80 years. jordi bonet came here for the

first time in 1932, when he was just seven years old. do you remember what this was like when you first came here? >> bonet: yes. >> logan: was it nothing like this? >> bonet: nothing of this. only this facçade, the walls. and the other facçade? this was nothing. >> logan: for years, the sagrada famiília was little more than a ruin, a pile of rubble and open sky. and it may have stayed that way were it not for this one family. this is jordi bonet's father, who was one of the lead architects here for more than 40 years. jordi followed him as chief architect for almost three decades, and his daughter mariona is an architect here today. together, they've spent more time working on this church than gaudií himself. the devotion to gaudií runs deep here. japanese sculptor etsuro sotoo has spent 35 years in this

church, and this is where he expects to be for the rest of his life, sculpting the figures that adorn gaudií's final masterpiece, consumed by the man and his vision. >> etsuro sotoo ( translated ): gaudií teaches me and helps me solve problems in my work. for me, he's not dead. >> logan: why did you convert to catholicism? you became a catholic. >> etsuro sotoo ( translated ): i was a buddhist, but after working here, i realized i couldn't do my job without knowing gaudií. and to know him, you have to be in the place he was, and that was a world of faith. >> logan: gaudií's deep faith is the reason he became known as "god's architect." this is one of the few photographs ever taken of him. he was 31 when he started working on the sagrada famiília. and over the next 43 years, it became an obsession. >> van hensbergen: he looked like a homeless person.

his trousers were held up with string. his clothes were kind of frayed, and... because all he was interested in was the sagrada famiília. i mean, that was every waking hour, to the point, at the end of his life, actually, where he was sleeping on the site. >> logan: gaudií died suddenly t this intersection in 1926 when he was hit by a tram. the driver pushed him aside, mistaking the beloved architect for a tramp. >> van hensbergen: the photos show you these people kind of bereft of their builder, the builder of god. >> logan: after his death, the builder of god's plaster models continued to guide construction for the next ten years, until 1936, when the spanish civil war broke out. anarchists attacked the sagrada famiília. this photo captures smoke billowing from its side. all those models gaudií had spet

years building were smashed to pieces. wow, these are all the original pieces that were picked up from his studio. >> mark burry: yup, and they've been sort of painstakingly identified. >> logan: these shattered fragments were rescued from the rubble and ashes by jordi bonet's father and a team of architects. there are thousands of them locked away inside this room in the sagrada famiília. they are the structural d.n.a. of gaudií's church. >> burry: they are absolutely the link; not a vague link, not a source of evidence-- it's the source of evidence. >> logan: new zealander mark burry was studying architecture at cambridge university in england when he first came to the sagrada famiília on a backpacking trip in 1977. he'd come at just the right moment. the architects were stuck. the second facçade had just been completed, and they were ready to take on the main body of the church, but no one could figure

out how to build it as gaudií intended. what were you going to do that they couldn't do? >> burry: my task was to actually reverse-engineer the models, if you like. >> logan: reverse-engineer them so he could understand how gaudií's models were supposed to fit together... >> burry: this is the model maker's workshop. >> logan: ...almost like the pieces of a complex puzzle. he told us gaudií's design was o advanced, there was nothing like it in the language of architecture at the time. in the end, he turned to the most sophisticated aeronautical design software available. >> burry: we had to look to other professions who've actually tackled the complexities of the sagrada famiília, which are basically complex shapes and surfaces, so that's the vehicle industry-- the car designers, the ship designers, the plane designers. they've been grappling for decades with the very same issues that gaudií was putting p as architectural challenges. >> logan: so you are using the most up-to-date aeronautical

engineering software to complete something that he conceived of in the late 1800s. >> burry: absolutely. >> logan: after 34 years, mark burry is now one of the lead architects. he took us up to their construction site in the sky, way above the city. from up here, you can see all the way to the mediterranean. how did they build these towers 130 years ago? >> burry: they built them by hand. >> logan: today, massive cranes swing heavy equipment and materials across the sky, constructing the sagrada famiíla precisely as gaudií envisioned. burry says they still rely on gaudií's models to guide them, nearly a hundred years later. >> burry: what's extraordinary is, because of the system that gaudií put in place using these particular geometries, it all fits within fractions of an inch. >> logan: the spot where we're standing is where they're building gaudií's central tower.

at 566 feet, it will make this the tallest church on earth. gaudií designed it to be three feet shorter than the tallest surrounding mountain, in deference to god. when you finish this tower, it's going to be double where we are right now? >> burry: we're going to get this view amplified by two. >> logan: mark burry says it will take at least another 13 years to finish the sagrada famiília, which is paid for entirely by donations to the church. during the pope's visit, jordi bonet was called on to represent the three generations of architects, engineers and sculptors who have brought gaudií's vision this far. do you think you will see this complete? >> bonet: this is very difficult to answer.

my age is a big age. but it is possible. >> logan: do you have any doubt in your mind that this will be finished one day? >> bonet: oh, yes, i... i believe. >> ♪ alleluia, alleluia... ( bell tolls ) >> go to 60minutesovertime.com to see the sagrada famiília as construction workers get to see it. sponsered by pfizer. [ jackie ] it's just so frustrating... ♪ the middle of this special moment and i need to run off to the bathroom. ♪ i'm fed up with always having to put my bladder's needs ahead of my daughter. ♪ so today, i'm finally talking to my doctor

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