St. Mary of Victories Church
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St. Mary of Victories Church
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| Location | 744 S. 3rd St., St. Louis, Missouri |
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| Coordinates | 38°37′5″N 90°11′26″W / 38.61806°N 90.19056°WCoordinates: 38°37′5″N 90°11′26″W / 38.61806°N 90.19056°W |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1843 |
| Architect | George I. Barnett and Franz Saler |
| Architectural style | Mannerist |
| NRHP Reference # | 80004510 |
| Added to NRHP | August 28, 1980 |
The Church of St. Mary of Victories is a historic Roman Catholic church in downtown St. Louis, Missouri in the Chouteau's Landing Historic District south of the Gateway Arch. It was established in 1843, and was the second Catholic Church to be built in the city. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The church was built to serve the needs of about 500 families who had emigrated from Germany. It is located in the hub of the pioneer "Chouteau's Landing" District, one of the early commercial and residential neighborhoods where the German immigrants settled in pre-Civil War era St. Louis. It took its name from a noted feast day proclaimed by Pope St. Pius V to celebrate the victory of the Christian Navy over Islamic forces in the Battle of Lepanto, off the coast of Italy in the Adriatic Sea in 1571. The church is also a consecrated church (1866) at the direction of Pope Pius IX. It also has an indulgenced High Altar (where hundreds of relics of saints are entombed) bestowed by Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century.
St. Mary's served as the first ethnic parish and spiritual home to the German Roman Catholic population of the city for the next century. It also provided a temporary home to a small community of Lebanese immigrants in the 20th-century, who went on to found a church in their own—present-day St. Raymond Maronite Cathedral in LaSalle Park neighborhood. St. Raymond's is now the Cathedral for the Maronite Eparchy west of the Mississippi River in the USA. Its former Archbishop, Most. Rev. Robert J. Shaheen, built the present St. Raymond's Cathedral under his pastoral administration.
The 1950s saw the departure from the city of a large number of the families whose German ancestors had worshiped there. They were replaced by a large community of refugees from Hungary after World War II and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. They gave new life to the parish, which became unofficially called the "Hungarian Church" (Hungarian: Magyar Templom).
The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It is also a consecrated Roman Catholic church; that is, the Vatican has bestowed the consecration privilege on the church itself by Pope Pius IX, performed with a specific ritual by St. Louis Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick in 1866. Archbishop Kenrick anointed each of the interior walls of the church with chrism oil per the consecration ritual, and today, brass wall cross sconces (candleholders) are displayed on the walls noting the consecration locations. While all Catholic churches are blessed, only a few in a diocese are consecrated, and it assures the church may only be used for Roman Catholic worship and for no other purpose. The main altar of the church also has an Indulgence attached to it by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, granting temporal remission of sins at the time of death for those Catholics saying the specific prayers, and dying in the state of grace.
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