Co-Cathedral of St. Alexander, Kyiv

About

The Co-Cathedral of St. Alexander (Ukrainian: Співкафедральний собор св. Олександра, romanized: Spivkafedralnyi sobor sv.

Oleksandra) also called Cathedral of St. Alexander of Kyiv is a Latin Catholic co-cathedral located in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Kyiv had a large Polish Catholic minority, which, however, lacked a proper Catholic church.

There existed only a small church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles Peter and Paul on Pechersk, built at the end of the 18th century (it burned down in 1843). Polish landowners, taking advantage of Tsar Alexander I’s visit to Kyiv, submitted a request to build the Catholic Church of St. Alexander to commemorate the imperial visit.

Permission was granted, and the site chosen for construction was a square in the middle of the former Słoboda Lacka, a district where Poles had settled since the time of Yaroslav the Wise. Construction lasted as long as twenty-five years, primarily due to a lack of funds, but also because of the restrictions imposed on everything Polish and Catholic in Russia after the failure of the November Uprising. The original design was significantly scaled down.

Construction was completed in 1842. On 30 August of that...