Church of St. Francis, Delyatyn

Rich salt deposits, as a guarantee of the prosperity of the Kolomyia region, inscribed its numerous villages on the pages of history as early as the time of the White Croats. However, they began to exist only on March 8, 1400, when the royal Polish authorities granted these lands above the Prut River to the brothers Stetsko and Ivashko Nagovych.

However, there is no information about the existence of a Catholic parish here for centuries, although for a long time Delyatyn, as the largest settlement, actually served as the administrative center of the surrounding lands under the Polish aristocracy. In 1645, the castle founded by Andrzej Bełżecki was even completed here, and in the eighteenth century the estates were transferred to the Potocki counts.

According to official documentation, until 1857 the local Roman Catholic community was subordinated to the Nadvirna parish and did not have its own church, despite the personal visit of Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) to the village in 1851. However, it may have been this coronation visit that got things off the ground.

Thus, on July 31, 1857, the Austrian government officially established a chapel in Deliatyn under the patronage of the Religious Fund, including a dozen and a half surrounding Nadvirna villages. At the same time, the cornerstone was laid for the foundation of the church of St. Francis, the patron saint of the emperor.

TheRoman Catholic Church of St. Francis is the main attraction of the village of Delyatyn. The foundation stone of the church was laid with the participation of Emperor Franz Joseph. The Austrian sovereign arrived on the day of the foundation of the religious building and personally laid several stones of the future monument and poured gold coins into the corners of the building. He also planted four cedars on the territory adjacent to the church, which were brought from Vienna. This event took place in 1857.

The construction of the church was completely completed in 1865, and the consecration took place on Christmas Eve on December 24 of that year by Father A. Yablonsky. At the same time, the Deliatny chapel officially came into its own only almost twelve years later with the blessing of Archbishop Francis Xavier Wierzchlejski (1803-1884).

To confirm the official status of the church of St. Francis, it was still necessary to undergo a consecration (conducted by Archbishop Severin Titus Morawski (1819-1900) on September 2, 1882), and only after that the parish appeared on the pages of official documents of the local representation of the Catholic Church.

The significant destruction of the church (damaged tower and roof) caused by the First World War of 1914-1918 was repaired only in 1924 by the Polish Republic, which gained control of these lands after the war. This was due to the significant destruction of the most famous Eastern European salt resort, with up to 80% of its housing stock destroyed to the ground.

During the Second World War of 1939-1945, the walls of the church of St. Francis of Assisi stood, but the occupying Soviet authorities closed it to parishioners and worship in 1945, placing here, in their "best" traditions, first a military warehouse (until 1970), and then a workshop of the local timber mill in the hope of killing the Christian soul. However, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the authorities remembered its architectural value and began renovations to accommodate a museum. These plans were not to be realized.

The warmth of the flame of faith warmed these walls only when Ukraine regained its independence - on August 18, 1994, the church was returned to the Delyatyn community, which completed the restoration and renovation work on its own. The renewed Catholic shrine was re-consecrated on September 25, 2016, by Metropolitan Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki of Lviv.

The small single-nave church of St. Francis in a mixed Romanesque-Gothic style of red brick under a gable roof is located on a hill along the Mukacheve-Frankivsk-Lviv highway in the central part of the village. It has a rectangular perimeter with ribs of stepped buttresses on the sides (four of each), a faceted apse with a rectangular vestry extension, and a small narthex in the southeast. To the right is a three-arched four-pillared two-tiered bell tower decorated with denticles.

The decorative elements of the exterior facades are entirely made of figured masonry, including box and arched door and window openings, the cross of the narthex tympanum, corner blades, the arcature of the central tympanum, the rose of the northern apse, and, of course, the the main highlight is a faceted three-tiered tower on the crest of a steep roof under a shalom-shaped dome with lucarnes, and its upper tier is emphasized by simple stucco columns of the Doric order alternating with oval shrope windows.

Address: 211a 16 July St., Delyatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine.

By car on the highway H09 (Mukachevo - Ivano-Frankivsk - Lviv) to Delyatyn, the church is located along the highway. By public transport to the center of Delyatyn, and then in the southern direction to the Church of St. Francis.