Former Church of St Michael the Archangel in Sokal - a former Roman Catholic parish church located in Sokal. Currently used as a residential block and sanitary inspectorate station.

History
The parish in Sokal was part of the Chelm diocese from the beginning of its existence. After the first partition of the Republic of Poland by Austrian decree it was incorporated into the Przemyśl diocese, and in 1787 into the Lviv archdiocese, where it remained until 1951.

The origins of the Sokal parish date back to the 15th century, the rector of the church was recorded in the sources as early as 1409, although the oldest surviving evidence of the functioning of the parish comes only from 1517.

Nothing is known about the first, oldest church in Sokal. It is not clear whether it stood on the left side of the Bug, where Sokal was originally located, or on the other side. Certainly, the temple bore the invocation of the Virgin Mary. In 1477, the city councillors funded a silver monstrance for it, made in Lviv by the goldsmith Augustine, and according to tradition, an image of the Sokal Mother of God was venerated in this temple, which was moved to the local Bernardine church in 1519 after a fire.

At the beginning of the 17th century (1603), the wooden parish church stood on the right bank of the River Bug, where the new town was founded, and was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles Peter, Paul and John. In 1633, it was extended by the Holy Trinity Chapel founded by Tomasz Zagrobski, the owner of the villages of Konotopa and Vasyl. The temple was plundered and profaned by Cossacks and Ruthenians from the surrounding villages during the Khmelnytsky uprising. Most probably, the construction of a new church began after this event, as sources from 1672 describe it as a brick building. In September 1678, a fire broke out in the church, destroying the roof and rafter framing, but the furnishings did not suffer and the damage was repaired by 1680. Sources from 1714 describe the church in Sokal as being dedicated to St John the Baptist. There were as many as eight altars in the interior, and two more were set up in the chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary. The temple was richly furnished with liturgical equipment and vestments.

Unfortunately, the parish church burned down in 1772 and services were moved to the former Brigidine Church (cancelled by imperial decree on 24 June 1782). Damage from the fire began to be removed the following year. Shortly after the Sokal church and monastery of the Brigidines were cancelled, the buildings were given to the local parish. The church was then extended and re-consecrated in 1783, with the former parish church becoming the Chapel of St John the Baptist.

In 1870, as a result of a great fire at the Bernardine monastery in Sokal, the fire spread to the other side of the River Bug and consumed the parish church and the post-Brigidine monastery, which housed the vicarage. All the furnishings burned, except for the statue of the Crucified Christ from the side altar. The church also suffered significantly during the First World War, when the town was occupied by the Russians. The bells were requisitioned and the repair of the church was estimated at 3,000 crowns. A further 3,000 crowns were to be spent on repairing the Chapel of St John the Baptist. However, there were no funds to carry out major works. It was not until 1932-1935 that a decision was made to carry out major renovation work, including the extension of the church into the nave of the southern cloisters of the monastery. This idea dated back to 1898, but at the time there were no funds to carry it out.

The construction of the new parish church of St Michael the Archangel continued throughout the interwar period, initially in neo-Gothic style and eventually in modernist forms.

After the correction of the borders in 1951, Poles were expelled from Sokal by the authorities of Soviet Ukraine, and the parish church and the chapel of St. John the Baptist were closed. The pobrygidek church was eventually demolished and the wing of the former monastery was converted into a residential block. The St John the Baptist chapel was converted into a fertiliser depot, and since 1972 it has housed the district sanitary-epidemiological station and flats.

Architecture
The old parish church (later chapel) of St. John the Baptist is located in the northern part of the town, near the Old Market Square in Sokal. It was a brick building, rectangular in plan, with a single nave and a presbytery closed with a trilateral side. The façade was triangularly topped with corners accentuated with obelisks. The roof had a turret for a bell. It is now drastically altered.

The former Brigidine Church was located in the south-western part of the town, on the bank of the river embankment. The wide area of the church and monastery complex was surrounded by a brick fortification wall with circular towers. The church was oriented (with the chancel facing east), built of brick with a single-nave body and a lower chancel closed with a semicircle. The façade was two-storey, framed in the higher part by volute finials and topped by a triangular abutment. To the south-west it was connected to the monastery wing. The church was demolished after 1951 under unknown circumstances and does not exist today.