Church of the Holy Guardian Angels – Kanjiža (Magyarkanizsa)
The Great Church of Kanjiža (Magyarkanizsa), the Roman Catholic parish church dedicated to the Holy Guardian Angels, dominates the centre of this small town on the right bank of the Tisza, which still has a Hungarian majority. The late Baroque church was built in 1768 and enlarged in 1911 with a transept and a new sanctuary; its 48.5-metre tower with five bells can be seen from afar.
The settlement, medieval Kanizsa, appears in the sources in 1093 and 1172, but after Ottoman rule it was repopulated only in the 18th century, mainly by Hungarians from Szeged and the Danube–Tisza interfluve. Its Catholics were at first cared for by the Franciscans of Subotica; the parish was founded in 1750 from the filial of Subotica, and its registers have been kept since 1755. The present church was completed in 1768 in the centre of the market town then called Ókanizsa, in a late Baroque style with classicising features.
During the War of Independence of 1848–49 the church burned down in the occupied town; it was restored in 1857. Rapidly growing Magyarkanizsa, which became a town with its own council in 1908, enlarged its church in 1911–12, at the same time as the new town hall and the spa were built: it then received its transept and new sanctuary, making the 62-metre-long, 15-metre-wide building one of the largest small-town churches of the region. The organ was built in Banská Bystrica in 1847 and rebuilt in 1938; the interior was repainted in 1934 and restored in 1992, and the exterior renewal and complete replacement of the roof took place in the 2000s.
The darkest page in the history of the church and the town belongs to the autumn of 1944: the incoming partisans rounded up hundreds of Hungarian men and buried some three hundred of them in mass graves along the road to Senta; among the victims was Dénes Szabó, the parish priest of Totovo Selo (Tótfalu). A memorial now preserves their memory. In 1923 the parish passed from the Archdiocese of Kalocsa to the Apostolic Administration of Bačka and later to the Diocese of Subotica; it still has more than eight thousand faithful. The town's other Catholic church, St Paul's, built in 1913, stands in the former Újkanizsa quarter.
Visiting: the Great Church stands in the centre of Kanjiža on School Square (Školski trg 2), a few minutes' walk from the town hall and the riverside park. Kanjiža lies close to the Serbian–Hungarian border, about 40 km from Szeged and 45 km from Subotica, and is easy to reach from the Horgoš and Röszke crossings. The church is open at Mass times; for group visits ask at the parish office. The spa and the Tisza promenade make a pleasant addition to a visit.
Sources: Hungarian Catholic Lexicon – Magyarkanizsa · Wikipedia – Magyarkanizsa (Kanjiža) · Vojvodina Travel – The Roman Catholic temple of St Angel Keepers, Kanjiža · Wikimedia Commons – Holy Guardian Angels Church, Kanjiža
Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 · Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Town:
Kanjiža (Magyarkanizsa)
