St Michael's Catholic Church is the oldest

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Peshawar Peshawar is the capital and List of cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by population, largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the sixth most populous city of Pakistan, with a district p ...

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

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

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 and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

, 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, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

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 is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

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-RC-church-stub