St. Eugenia (Stockholm)
St. Eugenia is a Catholic church in central Stockholm . It was built in 1982 according to the plans of the Danish architect Jörgen Kjaergaard and is located on the edge of the former castle garden Kungsträdgården in the Norrmalm business district . The church is dedicated to St. Eugenia (Eugénie d'Alsace), an abbess (700–735) of the monastery of Mont Sainte-Odile in Alsace . Patronage : September 16.
The church building belongs to the parish of the same name, which was founded in 1837 and is considered the oldest Catholic parish in Sweden since the Reformation ; it comprises (2010) around 9,000 members. The municipal area extends over downtown Stockholm, Gamla Stan and northern and western suburbs. Services are offered in Swedish, English, Polish and Arabic, among others.
Church rectorate and pastoral care of the community are the responsibility of the Jesuit order .
history
After King Gustav III. Having granted religious freedom to Catholics of foreign origin in 1783 , the Catholic community in Stockholm, which consisted of around 200 people, was offered a meeting room in what was then Södra Stadshuset, not far from the Slussen lock . In 1837 the community first moved into its own church in Norra Smedjegatan (which has since disappeared) in the center of the city. This was the first Catholic church to be built on the Scandinavian peninsula since the Reformation. Since freedom of religion was also introduced for Swedish citizens in 1860, the Jesuit order established a first community in Sweden in 1879 and took over the pastoral services of the parish of St. Eugenia.
In the 1950s, Stockholm City Council decided to redesign a larger area of the city center, including Norra Smedjegatan. The church was therefore torn down in the 1960s, and the congregation made do with temporary accommodation from then on. a. with a former cinema in Drottninggata, the Reginateater. In 1979 the current church site at Kungsträdgårdsgatan 12 was acquired.
architecture
Unusually, the new church was not designed as a stand-alone structure, but integrated into a historic and listed city palace from 1887. Since the actual sacred building remains hidden behind the facade of the original residential and office building, it is not architecturally recognizable from the outside as a church or parish. Only a comparatively small, gilded cross above the main entrance identifies the building facing the street as a church.
The interior of the church was deliberately designed soberly in terms of its furnishings and without elaborate jewelry work. Individual furnishings come from the old church, such as the tabernacle , originally a gift from the Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Österreich-Este in 1842. The baptismal font is a gift from the Swedish King Karl XIV. And his wife Désirée in 1838.
The church building also includes a spacious foyer, several community halls, a bookshop and a public reading room.
literature
- Peter Hornung: S: ta Eugenia katolska kyrka. Stockholm 1998.
- Manne Lind: Norra Smedjegatan: De sista åren. Stockholm 1970.
- Richard Wehner (Ed.): S: ta Eugenia Kyrka 1837–1937. Bidrag till Stockholms Katolska församlings historia. Uppsala 1937.
- Yvonne Maria Werner: Världsvid men främmande: den katolska kyrkan i Sverige 1873–1929. Uppsala 1996.
Web links
Coordinates: 59 ° 19 ′ 54.2 " N , 18 ° 4 ′ 20.7" E