Feb 14, 2012 / 01:24 am
A church in the Ukraine that Soviet authorities once seized for use as a “monument of communism” will once again be a place for Christian worship after renovations remove a neo-classical façade erected to disguise its nature.
“The church does not look like a place of worship. It wears a mask, as it were. It is in disguise. We want to take away this mask,” Fr. Grzegorz Romanowicz, the Franciscan Capuchin provincial in the Ukraine, told the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
“Until now, many people do not even recognize the building as a church from the outside.”
St. Joseph’s Church in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine is now in Catholic hands after a 20-year-long ownership dispute. Franciscan Capuchins now have pastoral care of the church, and the last stages of restoration are underway.