Late 19th and 20th Century
In 1897, Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) reorganized the Byzantine Rite Greek Pontifical College in Rome and established a Ruthenian Pontifical College, assigning to it the church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. On this occasion, Leo remodeled the façade, giving it the form it has today. Added were four niches with statues of the four Great Doctors of the Eastern Church: Sts. John Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Athanasius.
The middle inscription on the façade records this work:
LEO XIII PONTIFEX MAXIMUS INSTAURANDUM CURAVIT ANNO DOMINI MDCCCLXXXXVI
Below the inscription are the coats of arms of Pope Leo XIII on the left and of the Order of St. Basil on the right.
In 1970, among several Ukrainian Catholic institutions he founded in Rome, Ukrainian Catholic Major Archbishop Cardinal Josyf Slipyj established Sts. Sergius and Bacchus as a Ukrainian national parish and the attached college and dormitory next door became a guest hotel for Ukrainian pilgrims. The upper inscription on the façade records the work done in 1969-73:
RESTITUIT ET RESTAURAVIT IOSEPH CARDINALIS SLIPYI ANNO MCMLXIX MCMLXXIII
Cardinal Slipyj’s coat of arms was also added to the tympanum of the uppermost pediment.
Temporarily from 1971, the church’s buildings hosted the Museum of Art of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome. Through the 1980s, the chancery in exile of the Primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was located at Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. Through the last years of Cardinal Slipyj, who died in 1984 aged 92, and the years of Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, who was appointed Slipyj’s coadjutor bishop as Archbishop of Lviv in 1979, succeeded him at his death, and was made cardinal in 1985, the chancery was a central point in the West for contact with the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine and for advocating religious freedom under the Soviets, particularly at the time of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika. Lubachivsky returned from exile to Lviv in 1991.
The church and its guest accommodation hosted celebrations for the installation as Cardinal of Lubomyr Husar in 2001, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halychyna.
The guest hotel, named St. Sophia, is conducted by a community of Ukrainian Greek Catholic nuns, the Sisters Catechists of Saint Anne.
Read more about this topic: Santi Sergio E Bacco
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