Saturday, April 27, 2013

Catholics claim return of UNESCO-listed church

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The Czech state will lose the ownership of one of its most significant sights, Jan Santini's UNESCO-listed Baroque church in Zelena hora, south Moravia, the return of which the Catholics plan to claim within the church restitution, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
 
"We would like to apply for its return in the first half of May," Martina Jandlova, spokeswoman for the Brno Bishopric, told the paper.

It will be one of the first buildings the Catholic Church will claim under the law on the property settlement between the state and churches, which the government pushed through in spite of the leftist opposition protest late last year and which took effect as from January 1, 2013.

The National Heritage Institute (NPU), which manages the Zelena hora pilgrimage church on behalf of the state, has already worked out a legal analysis. If nothing unexpected happens, the state will have to return the valuable architectural complex built in Santini's typical style combining Baroque with Gothic elements, which was put on the UNESCO list of world monuments in 1994, the analysis showed, LN writes.

The Church lost the Zelena hora complex in 1953, i.e after the 1948 communist coup which the law sets as the deadline for the return of communist-seized property to churches, the paper continues.

The UNESCO status changes nothing about the Church's right to reacquire the property. In this respect, the law mentions only one exception - Prague's St Vitus Cathedral, LN recalls.

The Brno Bishopric will take over Zelena hora in a good condition, after the state invested millions of crowns in its maintenance, the paper writes.

As the complex's new owner, the Church will be bound to observe strict international rules of caring of so significant a monument, LN says.

The only problem the Church will face is the need to scrap a churchyard in the complex to upgrade the latter's value, which the Czech Republic pledged to do on the occasion of Zelena hora's UNESCO-listing.

No burials have been held in the churchyard since 1996 and it should be completely scrapped in 2016, LN writes.

The local Catholic priest, Vladimir Zalesky, says the church is aware of the churchyard's spiritual importance and it will try to take an accommodating approach to the families caring for the graves and simultaneously persuade them to nod to the transfer of their ancestors' remains.

If some graves were preserved in Zelena hora, it could cause a complication similar to that in Cesky Krumlov, south Bohemia, where the UNESCO has repeatedly demanded the removal of the "inappropriate element," the scene with revolving auditorium, a unique tourist attraction, from the local chateau park, the daily writes.

The state expects the Brno Bishopric also to apply for the return of the Sazava monastery, another important historical complex, LN adds.