St. Eugenia's Church (Stockholm)

St. Eugenia is a Catholic church in central Stockholm. It was built in 1982 to plans by the Danish architect Jorgen Kjaergaard and lies on the edge of the former castle garden Kungsträdgården in the business district Norrmalm. The church is dedicated to Saint Eugenia ( Eugénie d' Alsace), an abbess ( 700-735 ) of the monastery of Mont Sainte -Odile in Alsace. Patronage: September 16.

The church belongs to the parish of the same name, which was founded in 1837 and is the oldest Catholic church in Sweden is valid since the Reformation; it includes (2010) about 9,000 members. The municipal area extends over the center of Stockholm, Gamla Stan, as well as northern and western suburbs. Services are offered, inter alia, in Swedish, English, Polish and Arabic.

Church Rector and pastoral care of the parish are the Jesuit Order.

History

After King Gustav III. the Catholics of foreign origin had in 1783 granted freedom of religion was the Catholic community of Stockholm, which included about 200 people, a meeting room in the former Södra Stadshuset, near the sluice Slussen offered. 1837 moved into the town for the first time a church in the ( now defunct ) Norra Smedjegatan in the city center. This was the first Catholic church on the Scandinavian Peninsula since the Reformation. Since 1860, religious freedom was also introduced for Swedish citizens, taught the Jesuit order in 1879 a first community in Sweden and took over the pastoral activities of the parish of St. Eugenia.

In the 1950s, the Stockholm City Council adopted, a larger area of the city center - including the Norra Smedjegatan - remodel. The church was therefore demolished in the 1960s, and the town made ​​do from now on with temporary accommodation, including with a former cinema in the Drottninggata, the Reginateater. 1979, the present church was acquired basic Kungsträdgårdsgatan 12.

Architecture

The new church was, unusually, not designed as a stand-alone building, but integrated into a historic and monumental city palace from the year 1887. Since the actual religious building is hidden behind the facade of the original residential and office building, it is architecturally from the outside as a church or parish not recognizable. Only a comparatively small, gilded cross over the main entrance, the building to the street from a church.

The interior was designed by its resources, to deliberately sober and waiving elaborate jewelry work. Unique furnishings come from the old church, such as the tabernacle, originally a gift from the Austrian Archduke Maximilian of Austria -Este from 1842. The baptismal font is a gift of the Swedish King Karl XIV and his wife Desiree from the year 1838.

To the church building also include a large foyer, several community halls, bookstores and a public reading room.