The Cathedral of the Holy Saviour of Congo ( pt, Sé Catedral de São Salvador de Congo; kg, kulumbimbi) Also Former Cathedral of the Holy Saviour of Congo It is the name given to an old Catholic church built at the end of the 15th century in the capital of the

Kingdom of the Congo The Kingdom of Kongo ( kg, Kongo dya Ntotila or ''Wene wa Kongo;'' pt, Reino do Congo) was a kingdom located in central Africa in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the ...

, it was one of the first Catholic

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

s in sub-Saharan Africa and in what is now known as

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

. The construction as a simple church of which later would be cathedral, was initiated towards 1491, under João I of

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, concretely, and according to the documents of the time, between the 6 of May 1491 and the 6 of July of the same year; Later it would be repaired and extended by 1534, under the reign of

Afonso I Afonso I of PortugalOr also ''Affonso'' (Archaic Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonso'' (Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonsus'' (Latin version), sometimes rendered in English as ''Alphonzo'' or ''Alphonse'', depending on the Spanish or French inf ...

. By 1570, under the reign of

Álvaro I of Kongo Álvaro I Nimi a Lukeni lua Mvemba was a Manikongo (Mwene Kongo), or king of Kongo, from 1568 to 1587 and the founder of the Kwilu dynasty. Biography Álvaro's father was an unknown Kongo nobleman who died, leaving his mother to remarry to King ...

, the East Jagas towns briefly took the city, burning the church, which was later rebuilt. It was elevated to the status of cathedral in 1596, already under the king Álvaro II of the Congo. This same monarch tried in 1613, through

Pope Paul V Pope Paul V ( la, Paulus V; it, Paolo V) (17 September 1550 – 28 January 1621), born Camillo Borghese, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 16 May 1605 to his death in January 1621. In 1611, he honored ...

, that the king of Portugal took care of the cost of the maintenance of the bishops and canons of the cathedral. The city was sacked several times during the civil wars that followed the Battle of Mbwila of 1665, the first of them in 1668, and was abandoned in 1678, after being destroyed by the troops of the pretender to the throne Pedro III, leaving the Cathedral in ruins.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holy Saviour Cathedral, Church Roman Catholic cathedrals in Angola Roman Catholic churches completed in 1491 15th-century Roman Catholic church buildings

See also

References