In the Romanesque-Gothic cathedral in Kamień Pomorski, there is a small painting in a side chapel that is barely visible from the distance marked out by the wrought-iron grille separating the chapel from the nave. Next to it, on the wall, a marble plaque states that this is the chapel of the Miraculous Image of the Crucified Lord Jesus of Brzozdowce from the Archdiocese of Lviv. How did this unassuming painting find its way into the Pomeranian cathedral?

The establishment of the parish in Brzozdowce
Brzozdowce is a small village situated about 40 km south of Lviv, with a population of over 1,600 today. The earliest record, dating from 1410, mentions that Mikołaj Benk founded a wooden church in the newly established parish. Presumably following its destruction, another wooden church was renovated and endowed in 1718 thanks to the benefactors Franciszek and Anna Cetner.

In 1746, however, a remarkable event took place. In Jadwiga Dolińska’s house in Annopol, a painting of the Crucified Christ said to have wept tears of blood. On the basis of numerous accounts of this event, including one by the Archbishop of Lviv, Mikołaj Ignacy Wyżycki, dating from 1747, the image, which was already housed in the church in Brzozdowiec, was recognised as a miraculous image. In 1761, the then patron, Michał Józef Rzewuski, Voivode of Podolia, decided to build a brick church befitting the status of a place of pilgrimage, which Brzozdowce had quickly become. In 1769, the new church was erected in its shell form; it was consecrated in 1774, but the finishing works and the process of endowing the parish continued until 1777.

The architecture of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Brzozdowce
The imposing, compact structure of the church rises on a slight elevation beside the main road. It is a single-nave structure, built on a regular cruciform plan, with the transept arms being slightly shallower. The restrained architectural form, with delicate yet distinctive detailing, is characteristic of this phase of the Baroque in the Lviv region. It also attests to the high calibre of the designer and the craftsmanship of the builders. The builder was most likely Florian Richter. However, the plan, volume and forms of the detailing so faithfully replicate the church in Hodowica—a confirmed work by Bernard Meretyn—that it cannot be ruled out that this famous architect was the creator of the ‘abrys’, or design.

The church served as a local pilgrimage centre, associated with the painting of the Crucifixion, until the end of the Second World War. After the war, the inhabitants had no illusions as to what awaited Catholics and their church once the Communist regime had taken power. The last Mass was celebrated in the local church on 16 October 1945 by Father Michał Kaspruk. After a long journey, the inhabitants of Brzozdowce, together with their priest, arrived on 24 December of that year in Trzebieszewo, a village situated 5 km east of Kamień Pomorski.

From Brzozdowce to Kamień Pomorski
From 1946 until his death in 1962, Father M. Kaspruk served as dean of the Kamień Pomorski deanery. Upon leaving Brzozdowce, the priest took with him a miraculous image of Christ Crucified, 19th-century monstrances, liturgical chalices and a reliquary of the Holy Cross, as well as 18th- and 19th-century chasubles and a dalmatic. In 1946, these were housed in the church in Kamień Pomorski. It is worth noting here that between 1176 and 1544 this church served as the cathedral of the Diocese of Kamień Pomorski, it was subsequently taken over by the Evangelicals; after 1945, it returned to the Roman Catholic Church and, since 1972, has been a co-cathedral, currently of the Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień.

The case of the relocation of church furnishings—valuable not only for their artistic merit but also holding considerable emotional significance for the population displaced after 1945 from the former eastern territories of the Republic of Poland—is by no means unique. In many Polish towns and villages there are monuments similar to those in Brzozdowiec, particularly in the western and northern regions, where our compatriots from the east settled. But that is not all. In the Dominican church in Służewiec, Warsaw, there is a painting of the Immaculate Queen of the Holy Rosary from the Dominican church in Żółkiew, Ukraine. It is a sad testament to the catastrophe of the Second World War and its consequences.

Conservation work in Brzozdowce
And what of the church in Brzozdowce? In 1949, it was closed for worship. Converted into a kolkhoz warehouse for petrol and fertilisers, it fell into disrepair. The furnishings were completely destroyed, and chemical fumes damaged the wall paintings – the plaster was falling from the vaulted ceiling and the walls. Eventually abandoned, it nevertheless survived the fall of communism and was returned to the local Catholic community in 1992. On 23 January 1993, Bishop Marcjan Trofimiak consecrated it. In the following years, the roof was repaired, windows were fitted and a floor was laid. On 17 September (sic) 1995, a copy of the miraculous painting of the Crucifixion was installed; it had been funded by Monsignor Olgierd Ostrokołowicz of Kamień and brought by pilgrims from Kamień Pomorski.

Various renovation and conservation works are still ongoing. Between 2000 and 2002, conservators Danuta Komorowska and Andrzej Zalewski cleaned and conserved the fresco in the niche behind the high altar. In subsequent years, conservator Tomasz Dziurawiec and his team carried out the restoration and reconstruction of the painted altars in the transept; the work was funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Meanwhile, between 2018 and 2019, the POLONIKA Institute funded conservation work on the illusionistic altar of St Francis of Assisi, painted in tempera and situated in a niche on the right-hand side of the nave. The work was carried out by conservators Tomasz Dziurawiec and Agnieszka Chojkowska-Sawicka. The sanctuary is looked after by the Salvatorian priest, Father Damian Pankowiak. And although the church requires further conservation work, it has nevertheless been given a new lease of life.