Kościół pw. Świętego Brata Alberta Chmielowskiego
Churches of Kraków
Parish church (Roman Catholic), Czyżyny district. Architect: Witold Cęckiewicz. A parish is a community of believers tied to a particular church.
History
The ground for several new parishes in Nowa Huta was prepared on 11 June 1977 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who divided the parish of Our Lady Queen of Poland, with its hundred thousand faithful, into four pastoral areas. The parish of St Brother Albert Chmielowski was established on 1 September 1983 by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski. Earlier, on 26 September 1982, the same cardinal had blessed the site for the church, and on 13 October 1982 in Rome John Paul II blessed the foundation stone. The parish received permission to start building on 2 February 1984. The church was built in 1986-1994 to a design by Witold Cęckiewicz and was blessed on 12 June 1994 by Bishop Kazimierz Nycz.
The church stands on the Dywizjonu 303 estate in Czyżyny, next to the runway of an airfield that is no longer in use. The steel-framed roof rests on columns and has a suspended coffered ceiling, and the façade is glazed. White dominates the interior. At first the high altar held a painting of Brother Albert; since 2006 it has been replaced by a figure of the saint holding a loaf of bread marked with a cross in one hand and a hanging garment in the other. That painting and the Stations of the Cross from the 1980s are the work of Z. Kopycińska-Wilczkowa. In the porch there are plaques commemorating Polish airmen killed in the Second World War (the work of Bronisław Chromy from 1995) and the sappers who died in 1946 while clearing mines from the nearby airfield.
Did you know?
The building is unfinished: it has no tower.