Heritage

The Basilica and the Dominican Monastery in Lublin inscribed in the more than 1000-year tradition of the Catholic Church in Poland as the place where the Holy Cross is worshiped in his relics of the Holy Cross Tree. The relic is a remnant of the times of Jesus Christ, certified by numerous documents.

In our sanctuary from the end of the fourteenth century was stored a large piece of the cross on which Jesus Christ died, the Savior of the world. The interior of the basilica, the sacristy and the monastery document the uninterrupted cult of this relic.

Historians believe that the tree of the Holy Cross was brought to us from Kiev. It was probably done by Bishop Andrzej, a Dominican who in the fourteenth-century Kiev was the guardian of relics coming from Constantinople as the highest Christian hierarch at that time. Andrzej Bishop’s ashes rest in the crypt of our basilica. The relics of the Holy Cross in Lublin were pilgrimated by Polish kings and outstanding church and secular figures, including Jan Kazimierz, Jan III Sobieski and Stanisław August Poniatowski.

In recent times, the frequent guest of the sanctuary was Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin (1956-1978), later Pope who celebrated the Holy Mass many times before the relics.

In the 70’s and 80’s of the previous century there was a pilgrimage, that is, a relic journey through our Lublin diocese. For the arriving pilgrims, especially on the days of indulgences (May 3 and September 14), a magnificent church was built, which in 1967 received the title of the minor basilica granted by the Holy See. On November 9, 1987, during the third pilgrimage to his homeland, John Paul II during a homily celebrated at Lublin’s Czubach said the following words:

“In spirit, I visit the relics of the Holy Cross Tree in the Basilica of the Dominican Fathers, where I went to pray many times, and to celebrate Holy Mass”