Kościół pw. Miłosierdzia Bożego (ul. Jana Kurczaba)
Churches of Kraków
Parish church (Roman Catholic), Bieżanów-Prokocim district. A parish is a community of believers tied to a particular church.
History
The Church of Divine Mercy on Kurczaba Street in the Nowy Prokocim estate grew together with its community. It all began in October 1977 with the creation of a pastoral centre. On 10 May 1982 Bishop Stanisław Smoleński blessed the site of the future church, and on 1 February 1983 a parish was established for the whole estate. At the end of 1984, on 20 December, the faithful gained a chapel, and in September 1986 a parish house. From 1986 to 2008 the parish was led by Fr Jan Bednar, who later wrote a memoir about building this church.
The walls of the church itself began to rise in 1991. At the beginning of 1993 work started on the formwork for the cross on the building, and from 2 to 11 November that year the roof was concreted, using 64 concrete mixer loads. The consecration took place on 18 December 1999. The church is 32 metres wide and 36 metres long, covers more than 1,600 square metres and can hold up to 3,000 people, 700 of them seated.
The organ is also worth noting. In 2017 Fr Józef Bizoń, the parish priest at the time, tried to obtain a pipe organ from another parish. After talks with the Archdiocesan Commission for Church Music the plan changed, and in January 2018 it was decided to build an entirely new organ. The commission was won in a competition by the Hungarian firm AerisOrgona, which recreates instruments in the style of particular periods. It worked on the organ in 2019-2020, and it was blessed on 2 December 2021 by the Metropolitan of Kraków, Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski. The instrument is a stylistic copy of a Cavaillé-Coll organ, inspired by French Romanticism, and has a Barker lever.
Did you know?
On 10 March 2007 the church hosted a television link-up connecting the parish with eleven countries around the world, during which a Mass was broadcast.