Since being established in the UK at the end of WWII, the Belarusian Byzantine Catholic community was pretty much limited to using a small in-house chapel, located at various times in the Belarusian Library and Museum or the adjacent Community Centre, for worship. About five years ago, a small detached church was built on the museum grounds. Until now, I had only heard about this but hadn't seen a photograph. This is the first wooden church to be constructed within the bounds of the City of London since the Great Fire and has apparently garnered several awards for its design.
The photograph was taken on 24 Nov 2016 by a Wikipedian contributor whose user name is Nieszczarda2, a librarian, born in Belarus, and is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license [
commons.wikimedia.org]. Vladyka Ceslaus (Sipovich), Father Leo (Haroshka), and Mitred Protopresbyter Alexander (Nadson), all of whom served at one time or another as Apostolic Visitor for Belarusian Greek-Catholic Faithful Abroad, and all of whom are of blessed memory, would be so pleaased and so proud.
By the way, from barely a mention a few years ago, the UK's Belarusian community is now well-covered on Wikipedia. There are other photos and some interesting articles on there relevant to this small community;
the mission's website [
belaruschurch.org.uk] includes interior photos of the temple. Enjoy!
Many years,
Neil
