The last Polish king

Recently, the church where the last king of the Rzeczpospolita was buried was renovated and reopened. In Vowchyn (Belarusian, Russian: Volchin), a village in the Kamenetz district 35 km from the city of Brest, the first mass was recently held again in the church dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

The church was built in 1729-1731 at the expense of the Krakow nobleman Stanislaw Poniatowski. When his son Stanislaw August, the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian state, was born, he was baptized here.

In 1938 the remains of the last king, who died in Saint Petersburg, were transferred to Poland (at that time Volchin belonged to Poland) and buried in the Holy Trinity Church.

In the mid-1950s the church was closed and given to a collective farm, which used it as a warehouse. The burial place of the last king was looted. In 1988, remains of Poniatowski were handed over to Poland. The ashes of the king were buried in the Church of St. John in Warsaw.

In 2007 the building in Volchin was handed over to the faithful and two years later the restoration of the church began, which has now been completed.

You can visit the Holy Trinity Church during our Brest trip.