Prijedor Town Catholic Church

Author (Creator)

András Riedlmayer

Alternate Name(s)

Katolička župna crkva sv. JosipaRoman Catholic Parish Church of St. Joseph

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Town

Prijedor

Municipality

Prijedor

Region

Bosanska Krajina/Western Bosnia

Building Type

Catholic church

Building Use

religious

Historical Period

Austro-Hungarian

Additional Construction Details

19th c. (1896; new belfry 1970)

Building Setting

completely destroyed

Building Condition

completely destroyed

Damage Description

The Catholic parish church and its free-standing belfry arecompletely destroyed, building materials removed. The site where the church stood isan open field, uneven ground with grass growing on it. The adjacent parish centerbuilding still stands.

Source (Damage Description)

Site visit by author (07/2002), information and photos fromthe Ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Banja Luka and other sources.

Informant Statement

According to the informant, the Prijedor Catholic parish church was blown up twice.The first blast, shortly after midnight in the early hours of 1 September 1992,destroyed the greater part of the historic church. The only part of the church buildingleft standing was an arch above the church’s sanctuary. The top part of the church’smodern belfry remained, leaning at a crazy angle.A second explosion, in August 1995, destroyed the top of the belfry and whatremained of the church. The blast also damaged the parish center building next door.The Catholic parish priest of the church in Prijedor during the war, Fr. TomislavMatanović, was detained by police on 24 August 1995, allegedly in connection withthe destruction of the church. After being held under house arrest, Fr. Matanović andhis aged parents, Josip and Božana Matanović, were taken away on 19 September1995 by police and were not seen alive again. Six years later, in September 2001,three bodies were discovered in a well at Hambarine, 15km outside of Prijedor; theywere subsequently identified as those of Father Matanović and his mother and father.

Source (Informant Statement)

Fr. Marijan Stojanović, Roman Catholic parish priest in Prijedor (07/2002),interviewed by András Riedlmayer.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.