The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is a Catholic church in Kazan . Administratively it belongs to the dean's office of the Bashkortostan-Orenburg region-Tatarstan of the Diocese of St. Clement with the center in Saratov .
| Catholic temple | |
| Temple of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A country |  Russia |
| City | Kazan |
| Denomination | Catholicism |
| Diocese | Diocese of St. Clement in Saratov |
| Order of affiliation | Society of the Incarnate Word |
| Architectural style | Classicism |
| Building | 2005 - 2008 |
| Status | Active temple |
Content
History
The first Catholics in Kazan appeared in the XVIII century , mostly they were immigrants from Germany and the Baltic states. In 1835, a permanent Catholic parish was founded in Kazan, nursed by Polish priests. Due to the lack of a church, the parish performed divine services in various buildings of the city and often changed its location.
In 1855, the priest Ostian Galimsky filed a petition for the construction of the Catholic Church, arguing the petition with a strong increase in the number of parishioners. Two years later, the issue was resolved positively, with the condition that the appearance of the temple would not differ from the surrounding houses and not have a characteristic Catholic appearance. The construction of the stone church, designed by A.I. Peske, began in 1855, and it was consecrated on November 1, 1858 in honor of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross .
According to the results of the 1897 census , 1,591 men and 433 women of the Catholic faith lived in Kazan Province, including 1,760 in Kazan. Many famous people, including the linguist N. V. Krushevsky , an orientalist O. M. Kovalevsky , and a number of other professors of Kazan University, were parishioners of the temple.
After the issuance of the decree of Nicholas II in 1905 “On strengthening the beginnings of tolerance,” which canceled, among other things, restrictions on the appearance of non-Orthodox churches, the Kazan Catholic Church was expanded and rebuilt. The project of restructuring was made by the provincial engineer L. K. Hrshonovich, the appearance of the building has changed a lot. On September 14, 1908, the church was opened for worship and re-consecrated. At the same time, a parish school was opened at the church.
After the establishment of the Soviet government, the parish continued to work for some time, in 1921 all valuables “to help the starving Volga region” were requisitioned in the church. In 1927 the church was closed, the parish was dissolved.
The building of the temple after the period of desolation was transferred to the laboratory of the Kazan State Technical University named after A.N. Tupolev , and a wind tunnel was located in the central nave of the former temple.
The Catholic parish in Kazan was restored and registered in 1995 . The historic church building was not returned to the Catholics; instead, the city authorities handed over to the Catholic parish a small chapel, The Passion of the Lord, located in Arsk cemetery , which was restored with financial support from Catholic parishes in several countries. The chapel was consecrated after restoration in September 1998 by Bishop Clemens Pikkel .
Due to the difficulty of moving the wind tunnel from the historic Catholic church in 1999, the Kazan Mayor’s Office decided to allocate a section in the city center for Kazan Catholics at the intersection of Ostrovsky and Aydinov streets for the construction of a new church. After a series of delays, construction began in 2005, the mass consecration of the cornerstone took place on September 11, 2005 .
The construction took three years. On August 29, 2008, a solemn consecration of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross took place. The mass of consecration was led by the Dean of the College of Cardinals Angelo Sodano , he was co-served by Bishop Clemens Pikkel , Nuncio Antonio Mennini and several other bishops and priests. The consecration of the Church of the Exaltation took place exactly 150 years after the consecration of the first Kazan Catholic Church [1] . In the temple are the priests of the Society of the Incarnate Word . According to the data for 2017, the head priest is Father Andrei Startsev, and in the parish Father Gabriel Vergani serves as vicar of the parish.
Architecture
The temple was built in the style of classicism . The project was based on the facade of the historic Church of the Exaltation. The author of the project tried to bring the architecture of the new church as close as possible to the old one. In terms of the church has the shape of a cross with dimensions in the axes of 43.5 x 21.8 m . The main entrance of the temple is focused on the corner of Ostrovsky and Aydinov streets. The building area is 1812 m² [2] . The main facade is decorated with a protruding four- column portico , on either side of it there are two two-tiered quadrangular belltowers.
Interior decoration is made using white granite . From it are made the altar , the pulpit and the font for baptism . In the presbytery there is a wooden cross, 4 meters high and 3 meters wide. On the sides of it are paintings of religious themes and statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ the Savior, made by Polish masters. An Italian-made organ was installed in the temple [3] .
Links
Notes
- ↑ The head of the college of cardinals will consecrate the Catholic church in Kazan (Inaccessible link) . The appeal date is October 12, 2009. Archived August 4, 2008.
- ↑ Restoration projects (not available link)
- ↑ The Catholic Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross opens in Kazan / Official server of the Republic of Tatarstan (Inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is October 12, 2009. Archived October 30, 2009.