Divine Mercy Parish (Khazhyn)
s. Khazhyn
About the parish
The earliest references to the village of Khazhyn date to 1611. Population censuses recorded 518 residents in 1864, 872 in 1900, and 1,328 in 1926, of whom 483 were Polish.
Khazhyn’s Roman Catholics belonged to St John Nepomucene Parish in nearby Makhnivka until the landowner Ludwik Mazaraki built a masonry chapel here in 1804. It appears in documents of the then Diocese of Lutsk-Zhytomyr from 1852, still as part of the parish in Makhnivka.
The chapel remained under the care of the Mazaraki family until the First World War. From 1918, it belonged to St Barbara Parish in Berdychiv. This did not last long: in the 1930s, the Soviet authorities confiscated the church and turned it into a veterinary pharmacy.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the church was returned to the Catholic community, which partially rebuilt and renovated it. In 1997, Bishop Jan Purwiński consecrated it as the Church of Divine Mercy.
