St Michael's Catholic Church is the oldest

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

, Pakistan. It is located on The Mall. It was consecrated in 1851. It is part of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi The Catholic Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi (Lat: ''Dioecesis Islamabadensis-Ravalpindensis'') is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in Pakistan. There is anecdotal evidence that St. Thomas the Apostle passed through Ta ...

History

In the nineteenth century, armed British Catholic soldiers would parade to church, led by a Drum Major wielding his baton, with two bagpipers and two or four kettle drummers. After

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

, the soldiers would march back to their barracks. The church had special pews with arrangements for holding weapons. The church was not constructed using traditional Catholic architecture, but was built to resemble a Muslim Mosque, even engraving scriptures in the local language of

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

Post-Independence

Since 1957 the parish has been home to St. Mary's High School for boys. In 2001, Fr. John William, the parish priest at asked the Pakistani government for soldiers to guard Christian churches and housing developments after threats of violence had been made in Peshawar. The tower of the church almost collapsed following the country's worst-ever earthquake in 2005. Church leaders and Christian communities received letters warning them to convert to

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

or face suicide bombings. A group of church leaders met with police officials on August 11, 2007, and urged authorities to protect the minorities and apprehend the fundamentalists for causing unrest. Fr. Yousaf Amanat was parish priest at the time.UCANews 8/21/2007

References

Roman Catholic churches in Pakistan Churches in Peshawar 1851 establishments in British India Roman Catholic churches completed in 1851 {{Pakistan-church-stub