After in October 1831, the forces of the Russian army under the command of Count I. F. Paskevich, a rebellion that broke out on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Right-Bank Ukraine and partly Belarus was suppressed, the population of Siberia was replenished with exiles, an endless stream arriving from these regions. For many of them, Tobolsk became their place of residence for many years. The Church of the Holy Trinity, located on Rosa Luxembourg (formerly Epiphany) Street, is a monument to those ancient events.
House of prayer for exiled settlers
With difficulty settling in new places for them, the exiled settlers, the vast majority of whom were Catholics, created their own religious community. In 1843, its members appealed to the provincial authorities with a request to allow the construction of a house in which they could worship in accordance with their confessional characteristics.
After consideration of the issue and lengthy coordination with the city authorities, permission was received, and in 1848 the exiled Catholics got their own house of prayer. Because thetheir number did not decrease, and due to a number of political conflicts, even increased, in 1868 an independent parish was formed from them.
Wooden building - the forerunner of the temple
Soon a small wooden house built for worship received the status of a parish church. Its rector was a Polish priest, who was ordained in Warsaw, but, like most of his parishioners, ended up living in Tobolsk against his will.
Church of the Most Holy Trinity - this is how the house of prayer of political exiles was now called, in those years it was a small wooden building, which differed from the houses of local inhabitants only by a cross on the roof. Over the years, it decayed and, moreover, could not accommodate all the flock that grew over the years.
Temple is the brainchild of Russian Catholics
The need to build a new large and, if possible, stone structure became more and more obvious every year, and finally, in 1891, the newly appointed rector Father Vincent Przesmycki attended to obtaining permission to build a stone church.
From time immemorial, the wheels of the bureaucratic machine were spinning extremely slowly in Russia, and the petition of the Tobolsk priest traveled from office to office for six years, until finally, in 1897, a positive answer was received.
It took another three years to raise the necessary funds. We can safely say that the Church of the Holy Trinity (Tobolsk) was the brainchild of all the Catholics of the empire. From everywhere, even from its most deaf ends, there were transfers to a distantSiberian city. The main donors were, of course, representatives of the capital. It is known, for example, that the widow of Alfons Poklevsky, a prominent Ural industrialist and trader, donated 3,000 rubles to the construction fund, a huge amount of money at that time.
Trial of the bishop and closure of the temple
The Church of the Holy Trinity (Tobolsk) was built over seven years, and its solemn consecration took place in September 1907. For this purpose, the Catholic Bishop Jan Ceplyak arrived in the city. Already after the October coup, this minister of the Church of Christ was arrested by the Bolsheviks, and in 1923 he was sentenced to death by a Moscow court for allegedly counter-revolutionary activities. Only thanks to the intervention of the international community, whose voice the rulers of the country were still listening to, the death sentence was commuted to ten years in the camps.
In those very days, when the trial of the disgraced bishop was going on in the capital, a wave of anti-religious campaign was growing in Siberia. Church of the Holy Trinity (Tobolsk), an architectural monument of the early 20th century, was closed, the towers were demolished. The building itself was originally used as a dining room, and then as a film distribution office.
The revival of the temple
In the early 90s, Tobolsk also took over the baton of democratic transformations in the country. The Church of the Holy Trinity was again returned to the faithful, and, after a series of restoration and restoration works, the first mass was celebrated in it. In 2004, with funds donated by one ofcharitable organizations in Germany, an organ was installed in its premises. Since then, classical music concerts have been regularly held there, for which Tobolsk is rightfully famous.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, restored and restored, is a neo-Gothic red brick building. A belfry rises above the central part of the facade, and its edges are framed by two side towers.
From the western part of the building there is a semicircular apse, inside of which there is an altar. The Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity, the description of which is supplemented by photographs included in the article, fits perfectly into the surrounding landscape and harmonizes well with the nearby Tobolsk Kremlin.
