St. Peter and Paul (Tallinn)
St. Peter and Paul is the Roman Catholic parish church in the center of the Estonian capital Tallinn and the seat of the Apostolic Administrator of Estonia . It was in 1841, designed by Carlo Rossi built and on December 26, 1845 consecrated .
history
There have been no Catholic parishes in Estonia since the Reformation . In 1799, the predominantly Polish Catholics in Tallinn were given the refectory of the former Dominican monastery of St. Katharinen as a place for worship. After the congregation had grown to more than 1,500 members, the conversion of the monastery building into today's church began. The facade was not completed to its present form until 1920 after a lower convent building attached to it was demolished.
In 1924 the Apostolic Administration was established for Estonia, which has been independent since 1918. The management was initially carried out by Antonino Zecchini from Riga . The pastor in Tallinn was the German Jesuit Eduard Profittlich in 1930 , who promoted Catholic life in Estonia with great personal commitment and also worked in public. In 1931 he was appointed Apostolic Administrator and consecrated Titular Archbishop in St. Peter and Paul on December 27, 1936 . This gave the parish church the status of a pro-cathedral .
In 1940, Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact . Bishop Profittlich was arrested in 1941 and died in the Kirov camp in 1942 . His appointed successor, Henri Werling , was deported in 1945. Until the end of Stalinism in the mid-1950s, church work in Tallinn was only possible undercover. 1952–1987 Miķelis Krumpāns was pastor at St. Peter and Paul. A new period of prosperity began with perestroika . Several religious orders established branches in Tallinn. In 1992, Justo Mullor García was reappointed an Apostolic Administrator. In September 1993 Pope John Paul II visited Estonia. The Peter and Paul Church was renovated and refurbished in 1992 and 2002/03.
Architecture and equipment
The church is a simple three-aisled, just closed basilica with a neo-Gothic nave and a classicist double tower facade. It is white on the outside, light yellow on the inside and plastered in white. The neo-Gothic wooden furnishings were removed in 1938. The image of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Guido Reni on the altar wall, a gift from Ludwig I of Bavaria , and the statues of the church patrons Peter and Paul by Robert Johann Salemann have been preserved . Today's altar and ambo made of gray dolomite were created in 2002. The organ is a work by August Terkmann from 1913.
Web links
- Detailed history and description with pictures (English; PDF; 1.7 MB)
Coordinates: 59 ° 26 ′ 17 " N , 24 ° 44 ′ 56.4" E