Parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pruzhany - a Roman Catholic parish located in the diocese of Pinsk in the Pruzhany decanate in Belarus.

History of the parish
The parish in Pruzhany, originally of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Anne and the Holy Martyrs Saints Sigismund and Wenceslas, then of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Anne and St. Charles Borromeo, has been named after the late Roman Catholic Church. The first wooden church was initiated and founded by the then owner of the estate, Venclav Kostevicius. In 1534 Queen Bona renewed the foundation. From the 16th century, the parish belonged to the Luck diocese of szereszewo decanate and was very extensive.

There was a school and a hospital attached to the parish, maintained by the parson and the parishioners. There was a Rosary Brotherhood at the church, supported by its own contributions.

In the 18th-19th centuries, the parish had private chapels in Horodniany, in the Dołha and Kuplin estates and in the Bukrabowszczyzna manor.

In 1852, a cemetery chapel was built in the suburb of Gorka, which served as the parish church in 1864-1883.

In 1934 a branch was added to the Pruzhany parish - the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Linowo, located by the Orańczyce railway station (closed after 1939, demolished in the early 1990s).

In 1993, a house of the Congregation of Missionary Fathers was established at the parish, who have been the parish administrators ever since.

Subsequent parish churches in Pruzhany
. The first Roman Catholic temple in Pruzhany was built at the beginning of the 16th century. The church was named Sts. Sigismund and Wenceslas. It was most likely destroyed in the war with Moscow around 1660-1665.

Another church was built around 1670 on a large plot of land in Kobrinska Street, facing north from the square. A parsonage house and a hospital were built next to it. It was a substantial wooden, three-nave church with a crypt under the chancel. It had three carved altars. The main one housed an image of the Virgin and Child in a silver dress, considered miraculous and endowed with numerous votive offerings. The building survived without major interventions until the 1850s, although the urgent need to replace the roofing and foundations was already noted at the end of the 18th century. In 1816, the front tower was lowered as it was in danger of collapsing.

In 1820, there was an initiative to build a new, preferably brick church that would better emphasise the importance of the district town. However, the decision to build a new church was not taken until the middle of the 19th century. A parish committee was formed under the leadership of local landowners, with particular involvement of Walenty Szwykowski, owner of the Prużański key and district marshal of the gentry. The committee set itself the goal of raising funds for the construction, and soon a substantial sum was collected from contributions and from lotteries and cultural events organised in the town by Szwykowski and his wife, Herminia, née Ważyńska. In 1857, the construction of a magnificent brick church began, for which Szwykowski donated bricks free of charge. The new church was located on the site of the old wooden one, which was demolished. A temporary chapel was built from the wood obtained from the demolition, in which services were held alternately with the chapel built in 1852, located in the Catholic cemetery in the suburb of Górka. The author of the design for the Neo-Renaissance temple was probably the Warsaw architect Henryk Marconi. It was a magnificent Neo-Renaissance basilica - a three-nave building with a square presbytery closed with a semicircular apse and a two-storey façade, the lower one of which was given the form of a recessed portico and the upper one an arcaded loggia. The sizeable dimensions meant that the parish could not bear the cost of construction and, as a result, by the outbreak of the January Uprising, the walls had only been erected to the height of the crown cornice of the second storey. Nor were the towers in the façade realised.

At the end of 1864, the unfinished edifice was requisitioned for military purposes as part of the post-Uprising repression and soon handed over to the Orthodox Church. In 1866, the authorities decided to build an Orthodox church dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour within the church walls, although the decision to rebuild the church was made only in 1874. The work, designed by the architect of the Grodno provincial building department, Petr Ivanovich Zolotariev, was completed in 1882. The disused building stood until the early 1960s, when it was demolished. A central department store was built in its place.

As a result of the parishioners' long-standing efforts to return the temple building, in 1877-1878 the Grodno governor-general allowed negotiations with the Orthodox Church on the reimbursement of the costs it had incurred in adapting the building. However, the negotiations failed and as a result, a decision was made to build a new brick church on another site, using the sum of 24,889.19 roubles allocated by the authorities. In 1878, a project for a modest neo-Renaissance church was approved, signed by the provincial engineer Vasily Fedorovich Niebolsin and the provincial architect Ivan Ignatjevich Kalenkievich. In 1881, construction of the church began, and on 29 September 1883 work was completed and the building was handed over to the Roman Catholic clergy.

On 8 October 1884, the church was consecrated as St Anne and St Charles Borromeo by Bishop Karol Hryniewiecki of Vilnius.

In 1920, Father Adam Beszta-Borowski, dean of Prużany, attempted to revindicate the church building of Marconi's design, still in the hands of the Orthodox Church, to which he wanted to move the parish. The church, built between 1881 and 1883, would have been handed over to the recently established military parish. Ultimately, the revival was not carried out.

In 1946, the church was closed by the Soviet authorities. Services were held in the cemetery chapel. In 1951, the building was turned into a municipal community centre. In 1993, the church was recovered by the Catholics.

On 14 September 1998, Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek consecrated the temple under the traditional invocation of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Father Kazimierz Świątek
In 1939 Fr Kazimierz Swiatek became, as a neopresbyter, vicar in Pruzhany. In May 1939, after the parish priest was sent to serve as chaplain of the Polish Army, he took over as parish administrator. During the Second World War he was involved in underground work. Arrested on 21 April 1941 by the NKVD, he was sentenced to death after a tough investigation. The sentence was not carried out due to the outbreak of the German-Soviet war and the escape of the communists. Rev. Swiatek returned to Pruzhany. After the Red Army entered the city again, he was arrested and sent to a gulag.