A Church Profaned by the Soviets Restored to the Catholics in Crimea
The Church of St. Clement in Sevestapol, Crimea
The city of Sebastopol in Crimea has restored to the Catholics of the Latin rite the church of St. Clement, that was closed under the Soviet regime and transformed into a movie theater.
This restoration is “a just historical reparation to a religious community,” explained Dimitri Ovsyannikov, governor of Sebastopol.
The church was built thanks to a subscription in 1911, at a time when the Catholic community had 3,000 faithful, two thirds of whom were sailors in the Black Sea Fleet.
But with the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist regime the church was closed in 1936. During the siege of Sebastopol by German troops, between September 1941 and July 1942, it was turned into a transmission center and was bombed several times. In 1958, the building was transformed into a movie theater; the altar was replaced by a public restroom…
Bishop Jacek Pyl, Apostolic Delegate for the Republic of Crimea and Sebastopol, voiced his emotion upon hearing the announcement of this restoration:
It is hard to find the words to express our joy! History is full of wounds, and a closed and profaned church is one of them; fortunately, it is still standing. Today, our community is no longer an orphan.
The faithful of St. Clement are now going to begin construction to restore and rehabilitate the church before equipping it with an organ. All that it will still need after that is to be restored to the sacrosanct rite of the Church, the traditional Mass, since the building never knew the New Mass “of Paul VI”.
Source: Sevastopol.gov.ru / FSSPX.News – 6/21/2018
