Church of St. Dorothy

The one-nave basilica of the Church of St. Dorothy with an elongated rectangle of choirs and apses in the southeast is an ascetic and sad building in all its exquisite restraint of classical style. It is located on a small hill where the Sangushkiv Palace Park once ended. Moreover, the complex, together with the parish around the perimeter, is surrounded by a brick wall under a gabled sloping concrete roof with columns-supports and a bell tower in the east. The main visual accent of the building is the accumulation of rectangular volumes with arched windows, and the dominant one is the central nave under a gabled roof, to which two-stairways rise through an elegant terrace. This trend can be traced from the stepped decorative pediment of the southern edge of the nave with two elongated rectangular and two arched windows to the projection of the narthex under the triangular pediment. The prehistory of the new church building begins with the birth in 1799 of Eustace Ieronimovich Sangushko (1768-1844) and Clementina Maria Theresa of Chortory (1780-1852), the daughter of Dorta (1799-1822). A favorite of the family, she grew up not a very healthy child. The marriage to his cousin Karl Januszewicz Sanguszka (-1840), which the bride's father insisted on in order to preserve her large estates in the family, became a real ordeal for the young woman, so the union was soon dissolved. To restore her mental and physical health, Clementine Maria and her daughter decided to visit their mother in Rome. There, on foreign Italian soil, Dorothy died in 1822, ordering before her death to build a new church in Slavuta and bury her mortal body in the crypt beneath it. The parents could not disobey the last will of their beloved. In the same year, the church of St. Dorothy was founded on the north-eastern outskirts of the Slavutych Palace Park. The Catholic shrine of St. Eustaphius in Paris was taken as a model. The works were supervised by the local architect A. Brunak, and the works on the decoration were performed by E. Ostrovsky. Due to the high importance and urgency of the object, the building was ready, albeit in an unfinished form, in three years. The previous Catholic parish church was subordinated to the Evangelical-Augsburg Confession. Dorothy's embalmed body found its eternal peace in the dungeons of the church built at her request, becoming the first in the Sangushkiv family tomb, which still exists today. After that, the temple building was ennobled for another six years, during which the interior painting was completed, the minimum necessary church utensils were purchased, and the blessing of the spiritual leaders of the diocese, who consecrated its second throne in honor of St. Joseph. Although it will be another decade before the Slavutych church acquires its finished features, it will receive a main altar designed by architect Dionysius McClair (1762-1853) (1839), benches and a pulpit by carpenter Gaspar Davmanovich (1840), at the expense of Eustace Potocki, a Rococo organ. the Carmelite church in Horodyshche, closed by the Moscow occupation authorities (1841). The guardianship of the Sangushki princes, which ensured the sanctuary's secure existence, granted it parish status in 1848, and thirteen years later the complex was consecrated by Bishop Kasper Borovsky of Lutsk (1802-1885). Surprisingly, the Dorothy Church survived the Red Terror, becoming the custodian and protector of the icon of St. Teresa (the only survivor after the Bolsheviks burned the magnificent famous palace of Sangushek), and continued its activities for two decades of Soviet spirituality (except for six prewar years, when ) and the German occupation of World War II, until it was closed in 1946, in the best communist tradition, used for salt storage. The dawn of Ukrainian independence gave the Catholic church a second life when it was returned to the community in the early 1990s to be consecrated in 1994 by Bishop Jan Olshanski of Kamianets-Podilskyi (1919-2003), leaving it under the care of diocesan priests and the Congregation of the Sisters God's providence.

A historic and stately building of the 19th century. City decoration.

The oldest surviving building in the city

Historic location near the center. Atmospheric)

A very beautiful church. I am a little surprised that there is such a beautiful building in Slavuta. The services are held in the Polish-Ukrainian languages, different people come out and each speak his own language in his part. The main disadvantage is the terrible sound, nothing is heard due to the acoustics and bad speakers. I can't understand why they fenced the entrance to the stairs, it really spoils the view. But, on Sundays they open