Historical outline

The village is situated in Podolia, about 5 kilometres south-east of Kopyczyniec. The oldest mention of Kociubinets dates back to the 16th century. At that time, the estate was taken over by Stanislav Kopyczyński vel Kopyciński. Most probably, it was this Halich judge who established the village as a town, which resulted in the flourishing of numerous occupations in the following century.

In the centuries that followed, the village was owned by, among others, Paweł Krężelowski (early 17th century), the Jordan family (second half of the 17th century), the Strzemescy, Krukowieccy, Krzeczkowski, Dunin-Wąsowicz families (18th century), and from the late 18th century until World War II Kociubińce belonged to the Horodyscy family.

The first parish in Kociubince already existed at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The history of the church building in the town at that time is not clear. Supposedly, the village had its own church (shared with the inhabitants of Kopyczyniec), but the information about it is fuzzy. At the time of the Reformation, the building was supposedly taken over by "dissenters", although it is not recorded in later documents. At the height of 1641, it is mentioned, and in 1666 the inspector mentions only the site of a "destroyed temple".

In the nineteenth century, Kociubince was subordinate to the parish of Kopyczyńce, but in 1909 the Ministry of Religious Worship and Education gave permission for an independent parish to be established in the village. Initially it was an exposition. A fully independent institution was not established until 1925.

The church, which has survived to the present day, was built in 1902. The consecration took place at that time. Initially, the building was a public chapel, built thanks to the foundation of Ludwik Horodyski and the initiative of the inhabitants. A few years later, Andrzej Horodyski donated a parcel of land with a building to the parish, which was used as a vicarage. New outbuildings were also erected in the 1920s.

At the end of the Second World War, when Ukrainian nationalists were putting the inhabitants of Kociubiniec in a justified fear for their lives with their terrorist actions, priest Jan Walniczek commuted to the parish from Kopyczyniec. However, on the night of 7 II 1945 he was beaten and murdered.

During the Soviet domination, the building was turned into a country club. In 1992, the church was returned to the local Roman Catholic community.

Architecture

The building is located in the centre of the village, contemporaneously near the building of the social and cultural centre. It consists of a three-bay nave and a single-bay chancel closed with a straight wall and facing east (implicitly, towards Jerusalem). On the sides of the iris arch, the walls of the nave were run diagonally. The altar section is flanked by annexes housing the sacristy and the treasury. At the front, on the other hand, there is a massive tower with a porch on the ground floor and a choir above. In addition, a smaller turret is built into the corner between the tower and nave, containing a staircase leading to the choir.

The façade of the tower is filled with a large panel enclosed by a pointed arch. In the upper part of the panel are a pair of triple oculus, or round windows. They form a trefoil system. The existing tower (but without the pointed helmet) is closed with a triangular gable framed by pedestals on the sides. At the very top is a cross. The spire of the gable is decorated with a stepped frieze, which encloses a small rectangular window.

The elevation of the altar part is a simplified version of the frontal one. The other facades are closed with profiled cornices. The windows of the nave section are set in flat frames decorated with cusps.

The roofs over the nave and altar sections are gabled. There are gable roofs over the annexes flanking the chancel, and a half-pitched pyramidal roof over the turret with staircase. The front tower was covered with a (no longer extant) high roof in the shape of a truncated prism, above which was placed an (no longer extant) openwork gloriette with a high spire topped by a cross. All roofs were covered with sheet metal.

The articulation of the internal walls was divided by pilasters with capitals in the form of sections of profiled cornice. They mark the division into bays and support the carbons of the rainbow arch. In the corners, half-pillasters are used. The arcade of the rainbow arch and the arcade between the body and the choir room are slightly pointed.

The nave is covered with a barrel vault with lunettes, the chancel with a cross vault, and the other modules have ceilings.

As Jan K. Ostrowski writes in his study of the building, the church falls into the convention of simplified Gothic, with an admixture of influences characteristic of modern aesthetics. An example of this second vector can be seen in the pilasters articulating the interior walls.