wfn.org | Lutheran church re-consecrated in Kiev

[franki@elca.org]

Restoration exemplifies religious freedom in Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine/GENEVA 20 December 2000 (LWI) - A worship celebration on 29
October 2000 marked the re-consecration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
of St. Catherine in Kiev, which for six decades had been used for secular
purposes.

On Advent Sunday 1998, Alexander Omeltshenko, the Lord Mayor of Kiev, had
returned the church to the German Lutheran congregation for use "free of
charge", thereby ending a period of 60 years during which the place of
worship had been turned into a warehouse and a museum.

The re-consecration of the church by Bishop Edmund Ratz of Odessa followed
the conclusion of two years of renovation work. Archbishop Georg Kretschmar
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States (ELCROS)
delivered the sermon.

Originally built in 1857, the church was closed down by the authorities in
1938 and thereafter used as a goods depot. From 1969 to 1996 it housed the
Museum for the Architecture and Customs of the People of Ukraine. During the
renovation, the nave of the church was divided and the front half turned
into a community center with facilities for food distribution. Presently the
sanctuary, with its nave and galleries, has a sitting capacity of about 600
persons.

The renovation was supervised by the ARCUS Office of Architecture and
Engineering of Cottbus, Germany, jointly with architect Yury Dmitryevich,
Director of Monuments of the city of Kiev. The cost of the renovation was
around DEM 2.4 million (USD 1.1). The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria
contributed DEM 1.7 million (USD 780,000); DEM 600,000 (USD 275,000) came
from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, and DEM 100,000 (USD
46,000) was raised by the Lutheran congregation in Kiev.

At the church's re-consecration, Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma said in a
message that restoring the church to its original purpose was an example of
religious freedom in Ukraine. As a sign of reconciliation, the director of
the Museum for the Architecture and Customs of the People of Ukraine, which
had to move out after the building was returned to the German Lutheran
congregation, presented a valuable 19th century icon of Mary, entitled
"Mother of God" to the congregation.

Also dedicated during the October 29 ceremony was the church organ, a gift
from a congregation in Rheine in Westphalia, Germany.

St. Catherine's congregation in Kiev is the largest in the German
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ukraine, an independent regional church and
member of the ELCROS fellowship. The origins of the congregation date back
to the 18th century, when a German pastor held the first Lutheran worship
service in Kiev in 1767. The congregation was reconstituted in 1989-1990 and
presently has about 350 members, majority of whom are descendants of German
emigrants to Russia and Ukraine.

(Based on an article by Dr. Siegfried Plath, ELKRAS executive secretary)

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aspects of mission and development work. Its secretariat is located in
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