The "Maria Radna" monastery in Lipova, Western Romania, was a well-known place even to Pope John Paul 2nd.
The 'Maria Radna' monastery in Lipova, Arad County, in Western Romania, was a well-known place even to Pope John Paul 2nd, who in 1992 gave it the rank of 'Basilica Minor'. "In the Timisoara Diocese there is a church devoted to the Holy Virgin, known by the people as 'Maria Radna', said the Holy Father about that church known as early as the Middle Ages as home to Franciscan monks. The order managed to survive there even during the Ottoman occupation of the region of Banat between the 16th and the 18th centuries. That was actually the period when the first documents about the Maria Radna church appeared.
For more details we talked to father Nicolae Laus, Chancellor of the Roman - Catholic Bishopric in Timisoara:
"According to Turkish documents, there was a derelict church around 1642 that was renovated, while preserving its original size. In 1681 the church underwent further repairs. In the 164 year long Ottoman rule in Banat, there were several battles between the Austrian imperial armies and the Ottoman army. In 1695, the Turks burned everything to the ground, and the church in Radna was destroyed in the fire. In 1723, a new, bigger church was built, but that too proved too small, so that in 1756 plans were approved for the building of the church we see today".
The most valuable object in the church of Radna is a miracle-making icon of the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Painted on parchment, the icon miraculously survived the Ottoman fire of 1695, and today it holds prides of place. Here is father Nicolae Laus with the details:
Nicolae Laus: "According to documents prior to 1750, the icon had been in Radna since 1668. An old inhabitant of Radna, a Bosnian, had bought it from an Italian merchant and then donated it to the church in Maria Radna. Since 1767 the icon has been on the sanctuary in the present church whose construction started in 1756. Between 1769 and 1771, jeweler Joseph Moser made an exquisite silver frame for the icon of Virgin Mary. It was also Joseph Moser who made the big icon lamp in front of the sanctuary. The frame of the icon can be considered the most significant work of its kind in the whole of Eastern Europe. And because in 1895 the old wooden baroque sanctuary was seriously deteriorated, a decision was made that sculptor Stefan Toth build another one out of Carrara Marble. Its consecration was connected to the celebration of the bicentennial of the icon, commemorating the blaze of 1695."
Started in 1756, in time the Maria Radna church has preserved its impressive look. The nave is 56 meters long, 20 meters wide and 21 meters high. The towers, that were the last to be erected, were over-heightened in 1911 to reach 67 meters. Above the main altar there is a fresco featuring the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, painted by the Viennese artist Ferdinand Schlissel in 1762. In 2013, thanks to EU funding, the Maria Radna monastery was thoroughly refurbished. The works were completed in the autumn of 2015, having focused mainly on the monastic compound, according to father Nicolae Laus.
Nicolae Laus: "We refurbished the main façade and the towers, the inside of the church remained untouched. We only changed the electrical system inside the church but the focal point of the restoration works was the monastery, which was in a derelict state. We had all the three adjacent parts of the monastery restored. One part of the monastery was turned into a museum, another part is used as a conference hall because this project intended to attract tourists from the west of the country. At around 50 meters away from the monastery we set up a tourist information centre for those who come and visit the Maria Radna monastery, a former Franciscan place of worship".
The Franciscan monks lived there until 2003 when, due to the lack of members in the Franciscan order, they left the Maria Radna monastery in Lipova, which was entrusted to the Timisoara Bishopric.
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