Roman Catholic Deanery of Sumy
[1] The center of the deanery is located on the high right bank of the Psel River (left tributary of the Dnieper), in one of the old districts in the heart of the ancient[2] Ukrainian capital[3] Sumy.
The unique cave priory, founded by the first Greek missionaries who came to Kievan Rus' from Byzantine, was razed almost to the ground in the 1960s by communists.
At the end of the 19th century Roman Catholics in Sumy had decided to build their own church, which was approved in 1900 with the aid of famous patron Maecenas Paul Kharitonenko (1853–1914), at whose sugar refineries, the largest in Europe and Russia,[5] worked many specialists from Europe, chiefly Roman Catholics from Poland and the Czech Republic.
Consecrated in 1911 by Jan Tsepliak, bishop of Mogilev, the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was closed by authorities two decades later, and was not used as intended.
Reformation, proclaimed by Mikhail Gorbachev, had enabled believers to begin the struggle of reviving the town's Roman Catholic parish.
[8] In the beginning, parishioners gathered for services every two weeks (1991 – August 1992) conducted by the parish priest of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kharkiv, Fr.
For the celebration of the 2000th anniversary of Christmas, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Chapel (about 4 m (13 ft) high) was erected on the left side of the church's courtyard.
A bronze statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary with an Infant in her arms was placed on the left side of the church and building behind it, where the residents of the parish priest and Roman Catholic religious mission are accommodated.
Standing on a red brick pedestal with a quadrilateral base of black stone, surrounded by flowers, grass and trees, the polished figure is reminiscent of the sacramental.
On February 6, 2008, and April 15, 2008, websites were created for the mission and parish under the titles Caritas Spes Sumy and Ave Maria to elucidate their activities.
The church was used for other purposes for decades (the Ministry of Education turned it over to the disposal of the polytechnic secondary school, which was housed on the premises.
)The parish could be content with very little–open-air services were conducted by a priest who came from Sumy, across the street in the courtyard which belonged to a married couple who had become parishioners.
Stanislav Tanatarov, appointed to Sumy in September 1999, always considered it possible, and at a special conference convened in Romny he proclaimed his aspiration to reconsecrate the church.
Called Seven Winds by the local inhabitants, it is one of the town's sights owing to Jeff Woolthy, a young member of the Holy Apostles parish in Colorado Springs, USA.
The center of the fourth parish, a chapel named in honour of Saint Joseph, is currently located in a private home in Shostka.
