ENG - Sacred Heart Church
The history of the church and the parish
Parish affiliation of the villages located in the area of today's Bieruń Nowy varied. Some of them belonged to the parish in Oświęcim, others were bound to the Church of St. Clement in Lędziny and the parishes in Chełm Wielki and Bieruń Stary.
A community of Prussian officials, mostly Evangelicals, lived here from the beginning of the 19th century. In 1904 the Protestants began their efforts to build a church. The owner of the Solec estate, Max Schultze, a Catholic, donated his land for this purpose. The church was ready in 1909. After the German Reich had lost the war, during the plebiscite, services were no longer held here and the chapel was abandoned. The indigenous Polish population was Catholic. The church building was bought back in 1922. A house located across the street was purchased to serve as a parish house. It was consecrated in the same year. An independent Roman Catholic parish in Bieruń Nowy was established in 1925. Today, the church houses, among others, works of Józef Rapała, a well-known artist from Krakow: Sacred Heart of Jesus Statue of 1958 and a baptismal font of 1950. On the walls there are paintings depicting the Way of the Cross painted in 1949 by Jan Nyga from Bieruń Stary. They are copies of Gebhard Fugel’s paintings representing the Stations of the Cross. Figural stained glass windows decorate the church.
Parish cemetery
The cemetery was established in 1925, however, the burials were stopped in 1950 and resumed again in 2015. Here you can also visit, among others, a memorial obelisk to the victims of wars.