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Similar Sant'Antonio da Padova in Via Me, Santi Sergio e Bacco, Santi Fabiano e Venanzio, Santa Croce in Via Flami, Basilica of San Sisto Vecchio | ||
Santa Sofia a Via Boccea is a church at 478 Via Boccea, in Rome, Italy. It is dedicated to Holy Wisdom ("Sancta Sophia" in Latin), one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It served as the Mother Church of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church while St. George's Cathedral in Lviv was controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The church is the national church for the Ukrainians in Rome, a meeting place and religious center for the community. Divine Liturgy is celebrated according to the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite, while the church is in full communion with the Pope.
The church was built in 1967-1968 on the orders of Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church who had spent almost 20 years in soviet GULAG in Siberia, and was released in 1963 but not allowed to return to Ukraine. It is modeled after an eponymous church in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Relics of Pope Clement I (88-97) are kept in the church. The church practices the Byzantine rite, and therefore it has an iconostasis, which was painted by Juvenalij Josyf Mokryckyj.
In 1985, Pope John Paul II erected the church as one of the tituli suitable for Cardinal Priests. The first Cardinal Priest with title to Santa Sofia a Via Boccea was Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky. The current titular of the church is H.E. cardinal Lubomyr Husar, M.S.U., Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych for the Ukrainians. He was appointed on 21 February 2001.
In 1998 the church was raised to the status of minor basilica.