St. Catherine (Saint Petersburg)

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View of St. Catherine in Saint Petersburg (2015)

St. Catherine is the most important Roman Catholic church in Saint Petersburg in Russia and is located directly on Nevsky Prospect . The church bears the patronage of St. Catherine of Alexandria , the namesake of Tsarina Catherine II (r. 1762–1796). The building was constructed from 1763 to 1783 and closed in 1938. After the collapse of the Soviet Union , it was reopened for Roman Catholic worship and restored in 1992. In 2013 she was awarded the title of a minor basilica .

history

Requiem for Archduke Franz Ferdinand , 1914
View to the main altar
Destroyed side altar with crucifix

A previous church was built in 1710 in the Greek quarter on a wooden plot of land offered by Peter Van der Gar. It burned down in 1737, after which a plot of land on the main street of Saint Petersburg was purchased for a new building.

The church building is directly connected to the neighboring houses on Nevsky Prospect and is set back compared to their facades, creating a small square in front of the church building. The construction of these houses to the right and left of the church began in 1740 under the architect Peter Trezzini. The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1763. 20 years later, on October 7, 1783, the church was consecrated to St. Catherine. It was built according to plans by Domenico Trezzini , Jean-Baptiste Vallin de La Mothe and Antonio Rinaldi in the monumental early classicist style of the city expansion at the same time.

From 1800 to 1815, the Jesuit order provided pastoral care and founded a school for the children of the nobility. From 1816 Dominicans took over the leadership of the church. The later Archbishop of Warsaw Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński worked in the community from 1855 to 1857. From 1905 onwards, Priest Konstantin Budkiewicz was in charge, and he was shot on Easter vigil in 1923 in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow . The nun Maria Ursula Ledóchowska , who was beatified in 1983 and canonized in 2003, opened a boarding school for girls here in 1907, which she continued until 1914 when she had to leave Russia because of the First World War . In 1917, at the end of the Russian Empire , which included Poland and Lithuania, large Catholic areas, the Catholic community in the capital had 32,000 members. During this time, St. Catherine was one of ten Roman Catholic churches in the city.

During the Soviet Union , the church was closed in 1938. The Dominican priest Florin remained in the community with only 10 members until 1941, when the communist authorities expelled him from the country. In the following years the church was used as a storage room for vegetables, books and motorcycles. From 1968 the church was redesigned into a concert hall. The entire interior was destroyed by fire in 1984.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the parish was rebuilt in 1991 and a year later, in 1992, the church was once again a Roman Catholic church. After restoration work, it was consecrated on October 29, 2008.

Furnishing

A black crucifix rises above the altar in the semicircular closed choir . Below is the golden tabernacle . On the left in front of the choir there is an icon depicting St. Catherine of Alexandria in an oak frame and protected by glass. At the top of the frame is a small picture of Christ. The icon is the work of Dmitry and Irina Obukhov.

The original two side altars were made of wood when the church was being built and replaced by stone altars in the middle of the 19th century. The eastern altar made of white and gray marble was donated by the artist Ferdinando Galeotti. The solemn consecration of the side altar took place on September 30, 1850 by the titular bishop of Carystus , Ignacy Hołowinski . The reredos showed the painting Our Lady of the Rosary by Józef Oleszkiewicz. During the Soviet era, the painting fell into disrepair, and the altar was completely destroyed in the 1984 fire. Since 2003 there has been a large crucifix on the altar ruin. This was saved by a church member in 1938 after the church was closed. In 2012, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Poland , the conservation of the destroyed altar, which will serve as a memorial to the persecution of the Church, began.

Web links

Commons : St. Catherine (Saint Petersburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b October 18 - anniversary of the inauguration. Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg, October 15, 2013, accessed on July 28, 2015 .
  2. ^ Basilica of St. Catherine at gcatholic.org
  3. ↑ Icon of Saint Catherine. Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg, July 25, 2014, accessed on July 28, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Information board on the eastern side altar

Coordinates: 59 ° 56 ′ 8 ″  N , 30 ° 19 ′ 44 ″  E