Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish (Tetiiv)

The Roman Catholic Parish of All Saints in Tetiiv was founded under the title of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first mention of the parish dates to 1773. Its first wooden church was built in 1775 by Ludwika Ledóchowska, née Denhoff, wife of Franciszek Ledóchowski, Voivode of Chernihiv.

In 1804, Tomasz Adam Ostrowski built the masonry Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the site of the former wooden church. As owner of the Tetiiv estate, he cared for the town’s population. The town and its residents prospered under his stewardship. Ostrowski encouraged benefactors, including Dombrovskyi and Kunitskyi, to decorate the church. Inside, near the altar, stood a sculpture of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the sculptor Rygier.

A statue of St John Nepomucene stood before the main entrance. By 1821, the church had a parish school and a ten-bed hospital where poor patients could receive free treatment.

The church was consecrated in 1888 by Bishop Liubovytskyi.

The parish’s period of prosperity was interrupted by the October Revolution of 1917.

At that time, the pastor was the Bernardine Franciscan Fr Leon Metelskyi, and the parish numbered more than 2,300 people. It also included a masonry chapel in Vysoke, built in 1839, and a masonry chapel in Tetiiv Cemetery, built in 1805.

The October Revolution brought the campaign against religion and the destruction of sacred buildings. The Bolsheviks confiscated the church and expelled the pastor from his home. In 1921, Tetiiv came under the oppression of the Soviet Union. Fr Leon Metelskyi was then eighty years old, but courageously endured persecution alongside his parishioners. Exhausted and broken in spirit, he died in 1826 at the age of eighty-five.

During the Soviet period, the Elektronmash manufacturing association operated in the church premises.

Ukraine’s independence brought a renewal of Roman Catholic parish life. On 19 October 2005, the parish was registered with the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Fr Yaroslav Palka became the first pastor of the revived parish. In 2011, Petro Malchuk, Bishop of Kyiv-Zhytomyr, sought the return of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but his request was refused. Instead, the Roman Catholic community received ownership of the Svekovskyi family’s funerary chapel, built beside the church in the early twentieth century. Holy Mass is now celebrated there.

The current pastor is Fr Marek Rudź. The number of parishioners has grown during his ministry, and the chapel can no longer accommodate them all. It is unsuitable for children’s instruction and major celebrations, so the parishioners pray for the return of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.