Church of St Rosalia – Temerin
The parish church of Temerin, a large village north of Novi Sad that still has a Hungarian majority, was built in 1804 in honour of St Rosalia of Palermo at the expense of the local landowner, Count Sándor Széchen. The church is not only the spiritual centre of the Hungarian Catholics of southern Bačka but also the scene of the St Elijah's Day feast that grew out of a vow made by the people of Temerin in 1853.
The parish of Temerin already appears in the papal tithe list of 1332, but it vanished under Ottoman rule and was refounded only in 1783; until then the village was a filial of Novi Sad, and its registers have been kept since that year. Count Sándor Széchen bought the settlement from the treasury in 1796, and it received market-town status in 1799; after the Serbian frontier-guard families moved away, Hungarian settlers arrived, and in 1804 the landowner had the presbytery and the church built. In the fighting of 30 August 1848 the whole town burned down, the church tower collapsed and the inhabitants could return only at the beginning of 1850.
The church was fully restored in 1853, which is why the Hungarian Catholic Lexicon regards that year as the birth of the present building. Its organ was built in 1841 by István Kovács of Szeged. The church was enlarged several times in the 20th century: it was extended in 1928, renewed inside in 1954, given a new tower in 1957 and, between 1960 and 1966, enlarged with a transept and new roofs. The church is 37 m long and 12 m wide, its nave is 15 m high, the transept 30 m long and the tower 40 m tall; it has four bells. From the 1860s the right of patronage was held by the Fernbach family of Apatin.
A distinctive feature of religious life in Temerin is St Elijah's Day. After the destruction of 1848 the rebuilding town was struck by natural disasters for years, and after the worst of them, the storm of 20 July 1853, the Hungarian inhabitants vowed to keep the feast of the prophet Elijah from then on with a day of rest and a church celebration. The people of Temerin have kept the vow feast every year since, and the procession setting out from the Church of St Rosalia is one of the best-known traditions of the Hungarians of southern Bačka. In the jubilee year 2000 the parish gained a second church, dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, in another part of the town.
Pilgrimage feast: the titular feast of the church is St Rosalia's Day, 4 September; the vow feast of Temerin, St Elijah's Day, is held on 20 July with Mass and a procession.
Visiting: the church stands in the centre of Temerin on Novosadska Street, the axis of the old main street. Temerin lies about 20 km north of Novi Sad on the road to Bečej and is easy to reach by train and bus. The church is open at Mass times; at other times ask at the parish office.
Sources: Wikipedia – Temerin · Hungarian Catholic Lexicon – Temerin · Wikipedia (Serbian) – Roman Catholic Church of St Rosalia, Temerin · Wikipedia (Serbian) – Temerin · Wikimedia Commons – Saint Rosalia Church, Temerin
Photo: Ванилица / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Tournasol7 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Town:
Temerin
