Catholic Church of Our Lady 1.92

Catholic Church of Our Lady is a church in Aarhus, Denmark. The church is situated in the central Indre By neighbourhood on the pedestrian street Ryesgade, close to the Central Station and City Hall. It is a catholic church under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Copenhagen; built between 1877 and 1880 by designs of the German architect Franz Schmitz and later renovated by the architect Carl R. Frederiksen. The church has seating for 500 people.The congregation is the largest catholic congregation in Denmark consisting of some 3500 members from 89 different countries. Especially Vietnam is well-represented but also Iraq, Poland, Chile and Germans.HistoryThe church can be traced back to the Catholic mission established in Aarhus in 1873. The mission very quickly began planning for a church as a center for worship and other activities and the priest Augustin Sträter acquired a plot of land which at the time lay on the outskirts of the city on a grassy field. It was decided to erect the new church as quickly as possible and work on the foundation commenced before architects or builders had been hired. Sträter travelled to Koln in Germany to find a suitable architect for the project. Cologne Cathedral was at the time nearing completion as the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and Sträter managed to hire the architect Frantz Schmitz who had contributed to it.