The parish church of St Michael the Archangel in Sokal - a Roman Catholic parish church in Sokal built in the interwar period in modernist style. Currently the seat of the Roman Catholic parish in Sokal and Tartakovo.

History
The parish in Sokal has a medieval metric, with the rector of the church mentioned in sources as early as 1409. From the 15th to the 19th century, there were several parish churches in Sokal, the longest being the church at the Old Market Square dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and in the 19th century the parish was located at the Pobrigid church. As the temple was small, efforts to build a new church began as early as the beginning of the 20th century with the purchase of a representative plot of land located at the New Market Square. The foundation stone for the temple was consecrated by Archbishop Józef Bilczewski during his visit to Sokal on 19 May 1912. The designs for the large neo-Gothic temple were prepared by the Lviv architect Jan Sas-Zubrzycki. Jerzy Wowczak believes that they were created around 1910, but does not give any justification for this dating. The lack of archival information makes it difficult to determine the precise date of the designs. Construction progressed rapidly; a plan of the town made in 1918 shows the outline of the church coinciding with the surviving plans by Sas-Zubrzycki. For unknown reasons, construction was halted at an unspecified time and the original plans were subsequently amended. The plan of the neo-Gothic church was retained, as the walls had to be extended to a certain height during the first years of construction, but it was decided to change the style costume from neo-Gothic to modernist. It is not known when exactly the church was completed and whether this was done before or during the outbreak of the Second World War. Photographs from the 1940s show the completed architecture, but it is not known in what condition the interior of the church remained.

After the correction of the borders in 1951, Poles were expelled from Sokal by the authorities of Soviet Ukraine, and the church was closed. It was turned into a market hall and warehouse, and the side nave (eastern) housed Radio Sokal. The church was returned to Roman Catholics in 2011, and in 2012, former Sokal parishioners settled in Lukavets donated a second-hand altar to the church, which served as the main altar. The side aisle continues to serve as the home of Radio Sokal and has not been donated to the parish. The parish now includes the church in Sokal and the historic 18th century church in Tartakov.

Architecture
The church was built in the centre of the new town. It is a three-nave basilica with the chancel closed in a semicircle and facing north. The body has seven bays, the chancel two. The side naves are open to the main nave with arcades. A masonry music choir is built into the first bay, and polygonal chapels have been added to the sixth bay. The interior is covered with a reinforced concrete grid ceiling. The façade of the church has two towers, but only the right tower has been completed. The central part is decorated with long, narrow windows ending in a semicircle. The same windows are found in the body and chancel.

The original furnishings include a modernist concrete baptismal font with a polygonal bowl and a similar pulpit with steps set against the pillar of the nave.

Artistic issues
The original design of the church, prepared in Neo-Gothic style by Lviv architect Jan Sas-Zubrzycki, was typical for the time of its creation and for the style of the author. The temple was to be built on the plan of a Latin cross, with a three-nave, four-bay body, the transept providing for truncated corners in the middle, the right arm was to be finished with a straight wall and the left arm with a semicircle. The short chancel was to be closed with a semicircle. The elevations were supported by buttresses. Sas-Zubrzycki designed a facade with an asymmetrical single tower. Its helmet was very similar to another work of his - the helmet of the tower of St. Joseph's Church in Podgórze in Kraków, which is related to the helmet of St. Mary's Church in Kraków.

It is not known who the author of the final realised modernist costume of the temple was, nor when the original concept was changed. It probably happened in the 1930s, possibly after the new parish priest, Fr Nestor Szukalski, took over the parish in Sokal in 1931. The new design of the church in Sokal was in line with the popular trends in Polish architecture in the 1930s, which consisted in striving to combine the monumentalism of the building with elements of classicism. Helena Postawka-Lech pointed out that a similar solution was used in the parish church of Sts Peter and Paul in Trembowla.