History
On 13 March 1718, Jesuit priests began a fundraising campaign in order to build the church. Bishop Georgius Martonfi laid the cornerstone; the church was completed in 1724 and consecrated the following year by Bishop Joannes Antalfi. The Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV, so in 1776 Empress Maria Theresa transferred the church to the Piarists.
The church was restored in 1775, 1831, 1943, 1970 and 2005-6.
On 12 August 1956, priests and some 5,000 lay members of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church (who appeared on very short notice) organised a protest before the church. Its purpose was to demonstrate that their church, banned in 1948, had not ceased to exist, as the regime claimed. Initially they attempted to enter the church and hold mass, but the Roman Catholic priests did not allow them inside for fear of reprisals. Thus an open-air mass was held in front of the church; Fr. Vasile Chindriş in his sermon openly criticised the Communist leadership before masses of worshipers. Every priest who officiated at the liturgy was later arrested and imprisoned. Among the lay persons punished was Vasile Fărcaş, president of the Cluj Tribunal in the interwar period, who served nearly 8 years of a ten-year sentence, and his wife Eugenia.
Read more about this topic: Piarist Church, Cluj
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