The county seat is approx. 60 km south of Poznań, on the Leszno-Jarocin road.
The monastery is in the settlement of Głogówko, about 2 km east of the city centre.
St. Philip Neri Oratory Monastery
The hill has been known as Święta Góra (Holy Mountain) since the Middle Ages. There was a chapel in honour of the Virgin Mary here in 1468. A church was erected in 1513 and a Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri monastery built next to it in 1668. The new church was built to a design by Italian architect Baldassarre Longhena (actually a copy of his Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute in Venice), although the cupola was designed by Pompeo Ferrari, in 1675-1731. The monastery erected in 1732-1736 was also designed by Pompeo Ferrari.
The monastery was closed by the Prussian authorities in 1876 and the Congregation only returned in 1919. The monastery school was closed during WWII and the Stalinist period (there was an internment camp for Sisters of St. Elizabeth nuns from Silesia here between 1954 and 1957). Pope Paul VI designated 25 June as the Feast of Our Lady of Święto Góra and elevated the church to the rank of a minor basilica.
The monastery in Święta Góra was added to the Register of Historical Monuments in 2008.
Today, the Święto Góra Sanctuary of the Mystical Rose and Mistress of Spiritual Life is a place where anyone willing can engage in spiritual study.
The Musica Sacromontana oratorio music festival is held here in autumn.
The monumental baroque temple was erected on a central plan. A rectangular presbytery and six side chapels adjoin the octagonal nave and ambulatory. The cupola towers over the nave on the tholobate, the chapels have barrel vault ceilings and the ambulatory groin vaults. The frescoes in the cupola portray scenes from the life of St. Philip Neri painted by Georg Neunhertz in 1746. The rich interior furnishings are mainly baroque and rococo. The high altar, which dates from the 1st half of the 18th century, has a marvellous 1540 painting of the Virgin Mary with the panorama of Gostyń in the background. The rococo furniture in the sacristy accords with the interior decoration. There are crypts beneath the church.
The late-baroque monastery is joined to the church by a single-storey connector. A quadrilateral of two-storey buildings enclose a square patio.
St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) founded the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in 1575. Poland’s first St. Philip Neri Oratory monasteries were built in Gostyń (1671), Poznań (1671), Studzianna (1674) and Zdzież pod Borkiem (1678). All of them were closed during the partitions and the monks only returned after WWI. The Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri has two distinguishing characteristics: the monks do not take vows; and each monastic house is autonomous. The monks wear the same cassock as the clergy of the diocese in which the monastery is located.
Address:
Święta Góra - Głogówko
63-800 Gostyń
Tel. +48 65 572 00 14
