Kościół Matki Bożej Królowej Polski
Churches of Kraków
Parish church (Roman Catholic), Bieńczyce district. Date according to OpenStreetMap: 1952. A place of pilgrimage (shrine). A parish is a community of believers tied to a particular church.
History
The Lord's Ark (Arka Pana) was the first completely new church built in Nowa Huta and the sixth church there overall. Its story begins with a cross. In 1957 Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak blessed a site for a church in Bieńczyce and set up a cross on it, but in 1959 the authorities withdrew their permission and earmarked the site for a school. When workers came to remove the cross on 27 April 1960, fighting broke out over it, and the people of Nowa Huta defended it - in the end the cross was not taken away.
In 1965 the parish was given a site for a church. The first clods of earth were dug on 14 October 1967 by Archbishop Karol Wojtyła, and on 18 May 1969 he laid the foundation stone, which had been blessed by Pope Paul VI. Construction to a design by Wojciech Pietrzyk, on the initiative of Father Józef Gorzelany, took ten years. The church was consecrated on 15 May 1977 by Cardinal Wojtyła, who dedicated it to Our Lady Queen of Poland.
The roof makes the building look like an ark, and also like Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp. Above the church rises a 70-metre cross-mast, which is at the same time the structural backbone of the whole building. Seven doors, symbolising the seven sacraments, lead into the interior, which holds about 6000 people. The altar was carved from a single block of Carrara marble and shaped like an open hand laid flat. In the central part hangs Bronisław Chromy's sculpture "From Life to Life", and in a grotto stands a figure of Our Lady of Fátima, crowned on 13 September 1992. On the steps in front of the entrance stands a monument to John Paul II, unveiled in 2009. The carillon bells, donated by Catholics from the Netherlands and Belgium, play the melodies of well-known hymns every full hour between 6:00 and 21:00.
Did you know?
In the tabernacle, shaped like a globe, sparkles a stone that was believed to be a fragment of the Moon, given to Cardinal Wojtyła by Paul VI, who had received it from the crew of Apollo 11. According to a mineralogical examination, however, it is an aggregate of pyrite crystals, so the stone's extraterrestrial origin is rather doubtful.