The Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier, Grodno
BELARUS, 1999, 1 and 20 ruble coins, celebrating 2000 years of ChristianityOn 20 December 1999 Belarus issued two coins to mark the bicentenary of Christianity: A twenty ruble silver coin and a 1 ruble copper-nickel coin, the first 39 mm in diameter, the second 33 mm. Otherwise they have the same design except that on the reverse they bear different denominations, and one bears the amount of silver content. The coin pictures three cathedrals, from the top: Pinsk, Grodno and Minsk. The Cathedral at Grodno (Hrodna) on the east side of the town's main square is that of St. Francis Xavier, known as Farny Church (Polish for Cathedral). It was a Jesuit Church until the time of the Suppression (1773), when it was taken over as the Cathedral. As early as 1585 King Stefan Batory had donated funds for construction of a Catholic Church and a Jesuit collegium in Grodno, but his plan did not come to fruition a century later. The college began in 1626. The cornerstone of the Church was blessed in 1678, the foundation laid in 1683, and the consecration of the church took place on 6 December 1705 in the presence of King August II and Tsar Peter the Great. Its late Baroque frescoes were executed in 1752. The organ for the Jesuit Church was purchased in Krulevets (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1744. Actual construction was not completely finish until 1772, one year before the Suppression. More
BELARUS, 1997, 9th centenary of the city of Pinsk, Scott 221
The Jesuit college in Pinsk, now the Regional Museum, may be most famous as the burial place of St. Andrew Bobola. After his martyrdom the college was pillaged and burned several times and the tomb forgotten. But forty-five years later the rector of the college, considering a patron for the school, had visions of the martyr who told him he would be the patron of the college and also where to find his tomb. Despite the dampness of the underground tomb, the body turned out to be astonishingly incorrupt. More