Santa Maria Katolik KilisesiSanta Maria Catholic Church

The Santa Maria Church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is an important legacy of the Black Sea’s multicultural past and today the only Catholic church open for worship in Trabzon. Its construction was led by Capuchin friars, originally from Italy’s Emilia region, who had come to the Black Sea from Russian-ruled Tbilisi. Its foundations were laid in 1869; the church was completed in five years and opened for worship with a ceremony on 2 February 1874.

The painting the Capuchins brought with them to the city, showing the Virgin Mary in local dress with the Child Jesus asleep in her arms, became over time one with the church’s spiritual identity. Because of the miracles attributed to it, the image came to be known in the region as “Santa Maria di Trebisonda” (Our Lady of Trebizond).

The outer walls of the neo-Gothic building are of rubble stone and its inner partition walls of brick. The rectangular, three-aisled church has no apse and is covered by a long barrel vault; the arched aisles carried on piers are kept very high. The west front stands out with its symmetrical windows and triangular pediment.

The church’s priest, Don Andrea Santoro, was killed on 5 February 2006 while praying in the church. Born in 1945 in Priverno, Italy, Santoro worked for years as a priest in Rome before coming to Turkey of his own accord in 2000, serving first in Şanlıurfa-Harran and then in Trabzon. Today the church belongs to the Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia.