Historical outline

The village is located 4 kilometres south-west of Mikuliniec. The historical sources are rather silent about the former history of Ładyczyn. At the height of the 19th century, the estate belonged to the Konopek family, and from the end of that century until the inter-war period to Countess Józefa Reyowa.

For a long time, Ladyčín was subordinate to the parish in Mikulince, but at the beginning of the 20th century, efforts were made to build an independent church here and to sanction its own parish. In 1903 the construction of the church began, designed by Tadeusz Obminski. The building was erected in 1911, at which time an exposition was established on the site as part of the Trembowel deanery. In 1925, the post was elevated to the status of an independent parish.

As Kinga Blaschke writes in her study of the site and the locality, chapels were also built within the parish. The first of these began to be built on the site of Ladin itself, in parallel with the exposition, i.e. in 1911. Unfortunately, the First World War thwarted the ambitious plans of the inhabitants and slowed down the project. A second chapel was to be built in Ludwikowka, which was subordinate to the Ladychyn parish. However, it is not known whether the construction was completed. The trail ends in 1938.

The time of World War II was not only years of great anxiety, but also of heroic attitudes. In Ładyczyn, the Polish Ferenc family hid three Jews from the Blum family. In 2017, the heroes were posthumously honoured with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

In October 1944, Ukrainians of the OUN-UPA murdered as many as 41 Poles. This most likely provided the impetus for some of the parishioners to leave Ladychyn in 1945. Some of the church furnishings were then transported west. The last parish priest, Father Paweł Garścia, left the parish in April 1946.

During the Soviet domination, the Soviets turned the church into a grain warehouse. In 1992, the building was returned to the Catholics and reconsecrated. This time, however, it was given the new invocation of "Assumption of the Virgin Mary". In the following years, it was possible to carry out a major renovation of the church.

Architecture

The building is located in the central part of the village. The church has a cruciform ground plan. Its longitudinal arm is formed by a three-bay frame and a narrower, single-bay chancel, which faces north-west. The transverse arm is formed by rectangular chapels, which form the transept. In front of the nave is the front massif, which consists of a substantial turret, a porch in the ground floor and a room for the music choir on the first floor. The front part is flanked by annexes with a staircase and a storage room. The altar part is flanked by rectangular annexes housing, among other things, the sacristy.

The façades are set on a plinth, which is highlighted by a band running around the entire building. The attention is drawn to the carefully laid stone blocks from which the structure is built. The windows in the building (tower, nave, chapels and altar area) were also formed with carefully laid stone.

From the front, the attention is drawn to the tower section. The lintel bears the inscription "FROM YOUR GIFTS TO YOU, O LORD". A circular window is placed in the second storey. Between the part containing the porch and the choir there is a triangular gable separated by a stepped cornice, running to the middle of the third storey. It is crowned by a Celtic cross set on the parapet, which bears the date '1922'.

Gabled roofs, i.e. slightly truncated at the ends, are used over the nave and chapels. The covering of the main body also includes the front part of the tower. Above the altar section there is a gable roof transitioning to a pyramidal roof. The remaining modules are covered with gabled roofs. Interestingly, the signature turret is also the tower at the front with a gently withdrawn finial. In her study of the building, Kinga Blaschke writes of this lot:

"(...) in the lower part in the shape of a slender pyramid with a truncated apex, on which a granular superstructure is superimposed, decorated on four sides with triads of rectangular panels closed with semicircles and pierced above with semicircular clearances, surmounted by a pyramidal roof, with slopes decorated with triangular peaks; at the top of the roof a knob and a cross.' All the roofs have been covered with sheet metal.

The interior walls are plastered and articulated with wide lisens, which pass into vaulted gourds, a sharp-arched rainbow arcade and the same arcades between the nave and chapels. The vaults have a pointed arch design: a cross vault is used in the central bay of the nave, while the rest of the main body and the chapels have pointed lunette vaults. The altar section was covered with an umbrella vault. The windows in most of the modules are rectangular and pointed-arch windows. In some parts (e.g. in the annexes by the towers) there are rectangular window openings.

The most important elements related to the furnishings and decoration of the building included:

• The main altar with a stone mensa, in Neo-Gothic style. In the field was a sculpture of Christ Crucified dated 1922;
• Side altars, provisional. In the left one was inscribed a painting depicting the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa (dated to the 20th century). In the right one was inscribed a sculpture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, dated to the early 20th century, made of polychrome stone;
• Wall paintings by Paweł Gajewski, dated 1935, with images of the Evangelists (in the central bay of the nave), Our Lady of Perpetual Help and God the Father (above the windows), and images of St Jadwiga and St Casimir. On the wall above the music choir there were angel motifs, and in the other parts there was ornamental decoration.

Remnants of the former furnishings have survived to the present day: a fragment of the main altar, a confessional, a feretron with a statue of St Anthony, a picture of the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa and a statue of an angel.

Name: Parish Church of St. Casimir in Ladychyn

Name in use today: Parish Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Division: architecture

Location: Ukraine, district: Ternopil, locality: Ładyczyn

Author: Tadeusz Obmiński

Date of construction: 1911 r.

Technical data: Stone-built building