St John of Dukla Parish (Zhytomyr)

The history of the Order of Friars Minor in Zhytomyr begins in 1761. On 4 April that year, King Zygmunt August III of Poland granted the Franciscan friars land near Zhytomyr for a church and friary. The official foundation date of the Franciscan religious house is 26 September 1763. At the time, the town was a county centre and the seat of the Diocese of Kyiv. A masonry friary and a wooden church dedicated to Blessed John of Dukla were built first. Two priests and two brothers served there. The church burned down in 1820. A new masonry church was built in 1842. That same year, to save the friary, it was transferred by order of the Ecclesiastical College in St Petersburg to the Diocese of Lutsk-Zhytomyr for use as a seminary. The seminary remained in the Friars Minor’s house until 1917. In this way, neither the church nor the friary was destroyed by the tsar or put to another use. From then on, the Franciscan church became known as the “seminary church”.

The communist genocide of believers and the wider Ukrainian population began, claiming almost twenty million innocent victims. The Franciscan friars returned to their house in Zhytomyr on 17 May 1992. Jan Purwiński, Bishop of Zhytomyr, entrusted the church to them after a brief Pallottine presence there. Restoring the damaged church required much time and work. Its orientation had to be changed because a multi-storey building had been erected in front of the main entrance facing Soborna Square. Part of the friary was subsequently returned and restored. His Excellency Jan Purwiński dedicated the church on 25 October 1997. On 1 March 2006, after fifteen years of efforts to recover the friary premises, the Zhytomyr Regional State Administration solemnly transferred them to the Franciscan Fathers. The buildings had been occupied by the regional military commissariat since Soviet times. Their return was made possible by the great efforts of priests, the faithful and the authorities of the time. St John of Dukla Parish has developed an active community life, including altar servers, Franciscan Youth, the Secular Franciscan Order, the Living Rosary and a Bible study group. The friars also provide pastoral care to a home for older people, children’s homes and children from low-income families.