About 1,500 people filled the cathedral in the one-time Calvinist stronghold for the Saturday evening Mass on March 5, 2022. More would-be attendees had to be turned away due to space constraints. 

 Newsroom (08/03/2022 7:35 PM Gaudium Press) The Protestant St Peter’s Cathedral in Geneva, where John Calvin preached the Reformation, has hosted its first Catholic Mass in almost five centuries, with clerics from the once-opposed denominations sharing Lenten ashes in a sign of ecumenical harmony.

The Swiss city’s cathedral, Catholic in the 12th century when it was founded and Protestant since 1535, was planned for 2020 but could not be held because of the pandemic.

Back in 1535, the last Mass at the cathedral ended in turmoil as priests were chased out and statues and other “idolatrous” items thrown after them. Geneva then invited the Frenchman Calvin to preach and develop his theology there.

Expelled in 1538, Calvin returned three years later and died there in 1564. The city became the “Rome” of strict Reformed Protestantism. Moreover, as the French philosopher Voltaire complained, it was turned “into a convent.”

Geneva forced out its last resident Catholic bishop in 1533. After many twists of Swiss history, the city-state joined the present-day diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg in 1821.

Reflecting Switzerland’s turbulent religious past, the predominantly francophone diocese is based in bilingual Fribourg and, like all Swiss dioceses, depends directly on the Vatican.

Among the foreign Protestants who flocked to Geneva was John Knox, who later founded the Church of Scotland with Calvinist theology and Presbyterian church governance.

Except for its austere interior, the cathedral seemed Catholic again as a dozen priests in purple and white vestments concelebrated. In contrast, a few Protestant pastors in traditional black robes and white preaching bands looked on.

(Via The Tablet)

Compiled by Raju Hasmukh