St. Aleksei Catholic Church in Ivenets

The emergence of St. Aleksei church is closely connected with the history of Ivenets village - a small urban settlement in Belarus, as well as with the fate of Catholic churches that were built here earlier.

In the second half of the XIX century after the rebellion of Kastus Kalinousky the Catholic churches in Ivenets were confiscated and turned into the Orthodox churches: wooden Holy Trinity church, that was built in XVII century and stone St.Michael church that was built in the XVIII century on the territory of Franciscan monastery. Despite the fact that in Ivenets there were not any churches where could come belivers, it was impossible to get the permission to build a new Catholic church here. At that time Catholics were forced to gather in a small wooden chapel, built in 1820 on the territory of local cemetery.

After the publication of «Manifesto of Tolerance» in 1905 Ivenets got a chance to build a Catholic church. The necessary money were provided by General Edward Koversky and his wife Alzhbeta. On 23d May 1905 Mogilev Archbishop Jerzy Shembek blessed a cornerstone of a future church. Mikhail Hatovsky from Vilna was an architect of the new church. When he was designing a church draft he took as example St.Anne Church in Vilna. The construction of the temple was completed in 1907. On 23d December 1907 the church was consecrated in honor of St. Aleksei.

In 1947 the Soviet government stopped functioning of St. Aleksei church. In 1962 it was transferred to the Minsk State Library named after Lenin and became an archives. In the early 80”s local people began to seek an opportunity to return the temple, but they managed it only in 1989. In 1990 the Franciscans began to serve in St. Aleksei church.

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