Carmelite Church (Przemyśl)

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Carmelite Church of St. Theresa

The Carmelite Church of St. Theresa in Przemyśl is a late-Renaissance church in the city of Przemyśl in the Subcarpathian Voivodship in southern Poland.

Carmelites came to Przemyśl in 1620. Their church was designed most likely by Galleazzo Appiani and finished by 1630. The interior is explicitly baroque, including a pulpit with a ship-like shape.

In 1772 after the First Partition of Poland the city fell under Austrian rule, which by a decree of Joseph II liquidated the order in 1784. The Austrian authorities also blocked the ongoing construction of a Greek Catholic Cathedral (an already erected belfry was later turned into a clock tower) and instead offered the towns Ukrainian population the confiscated Carmelite Church as part of a plan to solidify their rule over the newly acquired territory by setting its inhabitants against each other.

Soon after the Second World War a Soviet controlled communist government expelled most of the Ukrainians from Przemyśl in course of the Action Wisła, including most of the clergy and bishop Josaphat Kotsylovskyi (Jozefat Kocyłowski). In 1946 a group of Carmelites returned to the empty church.

In 1991, shortly after Poland regained full independence and the Church was able to freely operate, the Roman Catholic Church transfered a former Jesuit church to the Greek Catholics while the Carmelite church continues to serve faithful of the Latin Rite. In 1996, the Carmelites removed the dome of the church, which sparked protests amongst Ukrainians in Przemyśl.