Photo: Miloš Turek, Radio Prague International
More than 1,800 churches, temples and religious sites will open their doors to the public within the 15th annual Night of Open Churches on Friday, June 2. The event includes concerts, exhibitions, and access to houses of prayer otherwise closed to the public. I spoke with Stanislav Zeman from the Prague Archbishopric and asked him how this increasingly popular tradition started.
“It started in Germany actually, in the year 2003, namely in Frankfurt and Hannover. They say it started by coincidence, by a church accidentally being left open in the evening. People were interested and sneaked in. And the clergy realized that people were interested and would welcome the chance to visit churches even in the night hours and so that is how it begun. Slowly, it spread all over Europe. For example, two years after, in 2005, Vienna joined massively, the year after that Brno – the Moravian Diocese – joined in and in the following year it went nationwide.”
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Author: Daniela Lazarová