Pinsk Cathedral, together with the former Franciscan monastery, is currently the most magnificent building and the most valuable monument of Pinsk. It preserves many relics of the past and religious life of the city and its surroundings.

A Short History of Pinsk
Pinsk, located at the mouth of the Pina River into the Pripyat River, was first mentioned in the Old Russian chronicle The Novel of Days Past (Nestor's Chronicle) in 1097. From the end of the 12th century, for the next 150 years, the city was the capital of the Turow-Pinsk principality, one of the minor powers of the Rurikiviks. In 1320, the duchy was taken over by Gediminas of Lithuania. From then on, until the Second Partition of the Republic (1793), Pinsk remained part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Initially, the city and the surrounding lands belonged to the princes of Olelkovich of Slutsk; from the beginning of the 16th century, it became royal property.

For centuries, Pinsk was the administrative (seat of the starosty, capital of the Pinsk district in the Brest-Lithuanian province), economic and religious centre (seat of the Orthodox Turow-Pinsk eparchy) of the vast, marshy areas of Polesia. In 1581, the city was granted the Magdeburg Law by King Stefan Batory. During the Partitions of Poland, Pinsk was a district town in the Minsk Governorate. The capital of Polesia became part of the reborn after 1918. Republic, although a disastrous fire in 1921 forced the centre of the newly created Polesie voivodeship to be moved to Brest. In 1939. Pinsk was annexed by the Soviet Union and today is a district city of the Brest region of the Republic of Belarus.

Establishment of the Latin parish in Pin sk
The Roman Catholic community has always been a small minority among the eastern Ruthenian population in Polesia. The first of the western religious congregations to appear in Pinsk (presumably still at the end of the 14th century) to minister to the Roman rite faithful were the Franciscans.

The Latin parish in Pinsk and the first church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary were founded by the Franciscans. The founder of the Latin parish and the first church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was - in the first third of the 15th century - the Duke of Pinsk, Turnov and Starodub, Sigismund Kiejstutowicz (ca. 1365-1440), later Grand Duke of Lithuania (1432-1440). Until the dissolution of the Franciscan monastery (1852), the church served a double function - as a monastic temple and, at the same time, a parish church for the local people.

At least three other churches of the Pińsk Mendicants were wooden structures until the beginning of the 18th century, and they fell victim to fires destroying the town several times. Construction of the present brick church, which began around 1712, continued for more than half a century (the two-tower façade was completed around 1766). The construction of the magnificent monastery took even longer. At the time of its construction, the Franciscan church and monastery complex was one of three brick buildings in Pinsk - along with the church and the Jesuit college, and the great synagogue.

Cathedral Church
The post-Franciscan church, located in the city centre, on the eastern side of the former market square, near the high bank of the Pina River, is currently the only historical Roman Catholic church functioning in Pinsk. Since 1925, it has served as the bishop's cathedral of the then-established Pinsk diocese. The church remained active after 1945, during the period of Soviet rule.

The diocese was renewed in 1991 and the Pinsk church returned to its function as a cathedral. In terms of its architectural form and decoration, together with the adjoining monastery complex, it is the most magnificent building and at the same time the most valuable architectural monument in the city - after the destruction of the post-Jesuit St Stanislaus Church by the Soviet authorities.

The cathedral has functioned uninterruptedly since its foundation, which is unique in the Brest-Litovsk voivodeship of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where, during the Partitions of Poland, especially as a result of post-Uprising repressions, the Tsarist authorities closed many churches and liquidated many parishes, while in Soviet times only six were active. For this reason, among others, the Pinsk basilica became a repository of equipment that was moved here at various points in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Architecture of the Pinsk temple
The cathedral is an oriented building, in the form of a so-called wall-and-pillar basilica. It has a wide and high three-bay nave to which three lower, unconnected chapels between the pillars are built on the sides. The elongated chancel is closed with a semicircle. In the crypt under the presbytery rest the clergy, meritorious for the diocese and the Pinsk church - Bishop Zygmunt Łoziński (1870-1932), deceased in the opinion of sanctity, and Cardinal Kazimierz Świątek (1914-2011).

The impressive furnishings of Pinsk's cathedral, which include stylistically consistent 18th-century altars covered with ornate woodcarving decoration with almost a hundred figures and a Baroque pulpit, are complemented by later examples of local craftsmanship and utilitarian objects dating from the inter-war period. Noteworthy among the paintings that adorn the cathedral walls are several 19th-century copies of earlier works from the Renaissance to Classicism. Of interest are paintings by artistically talented representatives of the Polesie landed gentry: Helena Skirmunttowa and Alfred Römer.

Commemorations in Pinsk Cathedral
Temples have always been places of special commemoration of people and their times. The Minsk Cathedral has several examples of just such lasting remembrance, in the form of plaques embedded in the interior or exterior walls of the building. These include two epitaphs dedicated to women - to Katarzyna Szyrminie of Kamieńscy, writer of Pińsk (died 1733) and Zofia of Szyrnów Ordzina, land judge of the Pińsk district (died 1786).

The church also features plaques commemorating the thirty hostages executed in Janów Poleski in January 1943, in retaliation for the smashing of a prison in Pinsk by Home Army Captain Jan Piwnik 'Ponure''s unit, and those commemorating the sailors of the Pinsk Flotilla who died in 1919-1939.

On the square in front of the Cathedral there is a monument with a statue of Jesus of Nazareth, referring to the statue of Christ of Trinity from Vilnius Antokolės, known in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.