#churchnight

Christianity has existed in Latvia since Bishop Albert and his army of crusaders forcibly converted the pagan natives in 1201 (and, according to legend, founded the city of Rīga), but like most of the rest of Western Europe, Latvia is a mostly secular country and religion is not part of the majority of Latvians' day-to-day lives. Bāznicu nakts was founded by an interdenominational group including Latvia's Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, and other denominations throughout the country to try to get people into the country's churches on one special night each year. Since the event is religious in nature, its funded almost entirely by a special organization set up for the event by the participants as well as various non-government partners, with limited help from city government. This year, around 190 Latvian churches took part in the festivities.

Although churches from all throughout the city participate in the event (including Saint Saviour's Anglican Church in Vecrīga where we are members), we decided to take this opportunity to visit the new Catholic church in our very own neighborhood of Ķengargs that was still in the process of being built when I first came to Rīga in 2013. According to it's website, the land was purchased by the Archdiocese in 2011 and the finished building was officially consecrated in 2015 as Svētā Antona draudze (Saint Anthony's).

For readers in America it might come as a bit of a surprise that a new church has actually been built, as many under-attended church buildings are in the process of being sold off and many new churches in the US meet in unconventional spaces such as movie theaters. While church attendance is generally down throughout Western Europe as well, the Catholic Church is actually doing quite well in Latvia despite not historically being the majority church in the country (aside from the southeast regions which were controlled by Catholic Poland from the 1500s-1700s).

Although the events officially started at 6:00 PM as with everywhere in the city, the first few hours here were mostly discussions about faith and family in Latvian that I wouldn't have been able to participate much in due to my A2-B1ish language skills. We instead decided to head over a bit before 9:00 PM, when all of the participants in all of the churches throughout the entire country were to say the Lord's prayer at once. After, there was supposed to be a one-hour choral and organ concert that sounded like it would be nice.

The outside of the church still looked brand new, with the yellow brick not having yet lost any of its luster. It did feel a bit like the church had been plucked and dropped there; since older churches usually have their neighborhoods built around them as they were meant to be the cornerstones of their areas, this is an issue that virtually all “new churches” have to deal with.

We got there just as a rosary prayer was finishing up, so we politely waited for it to finish before we entered through the glass doors. We sat close to the back, right under the balcony where the choir and organ performed. The songs they did were quite beautiful, and the concert lasted an hour or so. Although I do understand the idea behind having the music come from above and be ambient throughout the room, I can't help but feel that it would have been nice to actually see the performers in front of us. Unlike the more touristy churches in Vecrīga, this one was only about 1/3 full and it seemed that most of the people here attended services on a regular basis.

There were about 10 songs which covered the classical era all the way up to modern times, some of which were sung by a local women's choir and some of which were performed by the church's organist. A few songs featured both, including the final song: Raimond Pauls' “Māte Marija” (Mother Mary), originally sung by Marija Numova as seen below.

After the concert, there was a five minute break before the next one was to begin. We decided to head home instead of staying for the next one, but before we did we walked around the church a bit to get a better look at some of the artwork. Like most all new churches, it still felt a little bit like the shrink wrap had just been taken off and that the building was still in the process of gaining its own identity and character.