Warsaw, August 25, 2020
orthodox.pl
The Agia Sophia Cathedral in Warsaw, which has been under construction since 2015, will be consecrated on September 20, on the eve of the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.
As His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland notes in a new statement to the episcopate, clergy, and faithful of the Polish Orthodox Church, published on the official Polish Church site, the construction of the cathedral is already at a stage “that we can enter it and celebrate the most holy offering that can be made here on Earth by man—the Divine Liturgy.”
The foundation stone of the cathedral, the first new church in Warsaw in 100 years, was laid by Met. Sawa and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in December 2015, and the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in May 2018. New frescoes were unveiled in the main dome of the cathedral in October of last year.
Thus, the Lesser Consecration will take place on September 20, he writes.
The project has been possible thanks to the will of God and the power of faith of the Orthodox Church in Poland, His Beatitude writes, together with the permission of the state and administrative authorities. The cathedral is “dedicated to the Living God in the Holy Trinity, and His Wisdom revealed in the Most Holy Theotokos.”
The church is also dedicated to the memory of the ancestors of the Polish Orthodox people, especially those who have died in camps and in the Warsaw Uprising.
And, as the Polish primate notes, the consecration of the Agia Sophia in Warsaw takes place as the pain of the conversion of Agia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque is still felt in the hearts of all Christians. The great 6th-century cathedral served as the template for the new cathedral in Warsaw.
