Church of the Assumption – Bečej (Óbecse)
The Church of the Assumption in Bečej (Óbecse) is the town-centre parish church of this town on the Tisza, and its high-altar painting is the work of Mór Than, a native of the town. Its parish is recorded as early as 1338, making it one of the oldest centres of Catholic church life in Bačka.
The parish of Becse already existed in the Middle Ages and was re-established in 1757; its registers have been kept ever since. The church was consecrated in 1776 in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and acquired its present form in a rebuilding of 1830. A tall, slender tower rises in front of the façade of the elongated, single-nave building, which ends in a semicircular apse.
The high-altar painting of the Assumption and the painting of the side altar of St Joseph were made by Mór Than (1828–1899), who was born in Bečej and became a leading figure of 19th-century Hungarian history painting. The church was restored in 1895 and 1923. On 16 November 1958 the organ caught fire and the blaze also destroyed the interior decoration; the church was restored in 1959, and its new two-manual organ was built by Janez Jenko in 1960.
The parish also played an important role in Catholic education: it was in Bečej that the School Sisters of Notre Dame opened their first school and convent in the Archdiocese of Kalocsa. Another altarpiece by Mór Than adorns the Chapel of St John of Nepomuk, built in 1842 in the Hungarian cemetery. In the lower part of town, the Church of St Anthony of Padua of the second Catholic parish was built in the early 20th century. In 1928 the parish priest Ferenc Petrányi published a memorial volume for the centenary of Mór Than's birth; he himself was tortured to death by partisans on 9 October 1944.
Visiting: the church stands in the centre of Bečej, on the main square. Nearby are the former home of the Than brothers – the painter Mór Than and the chemist Károly Than – and the Serbian Orthodox Church of St George, known for its iconostasis painted by Uroš Predić. At the mouth of the Franz Joseph Canal you can also see the lock built in 1895–1899, the work of Gustave Eiffel's firm.
Sources: Hungarian Catholic Lexicon · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (Serbian) · Wikipedia – Mór Than
Photo: Ванилица / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Miljan Simonović / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Town:
Bečej (Óbecse)
