Description of the attraction
The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in the city of Borisov was built on the initiative of the Borisov city headman Adam Kazanovich in 1642. The church was wooden and burned down during a devastating fire in 1806. The construction of a new brick church began immediately, in the year of the fire, but it lasted for 17 years. Only in 1823 the church was consecrated.
In 1937, Borisov's Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary unexpectedly found itself in the center of a real spy scandal. The abbot Adolf Kshevitsky was accused of espionage and taken into custody, but after him all the ministers of the Catholic Church, including an elderly cleaning lady, ended up in the dungeons of the NKVD on the same ridiculous charge. Of course, after that, no one ever saw the arrested people. Very valuable church utensils and other property have mysteriously disappeared. But a convenient large warehouse of all sorts of things appeared that had to be stored behind the massive impregnable walls of the former temple.
In 1945 it was decided to set up a cinema in the church. The high bell tower with the cross was demolished, valuable frescoes were plastered and an entertainment facility for the city public was made. It was post-war time, everyone wanted fun and pleasure.
In 1965, a cinema was built in the city. The building of the former temple that no one needed was transferred to a medical school so that future nurses would use it as a gym. But the school soon no longer needed the former church, as a new comfortable spacious building with its own gym was built for the educational institution.
The former temple became empty and began to collapse rapidly. They wanted to make an exhibition hall out of it, but it was too late - too many costs were already required for its restoration.
And then, on October 24, 1988, it was finally decided to transfer the church to the Catholics. Western Catholics helped a small Borisov community, and soon a proud four-tier snow-white bell tower with a radiant Catholic cross ascended in Borisov. In 1990, the church was re-consecrated by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, whose name is inextricably linked with the revival of the Catholic traditions of Belarus and Russia.
