Kościół pw. Świętego Szczepana, Kraków

Saint Stephen’s Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Kraków’s Nowa Wieś, built from 1933 to 1938 to designs by Zdzisław Mączeński. Its interwar modernist interior includes a lanterned dome, historic furnishings from an earlier church, and donor-funded stained glass.

The church before you is Saint Stephen’s, a Roman Catholic parish church on Henryka Sienkiewicza Street in Nowa Wieś. Built between 1933 and 1938 to plans by Zdzisław Mączeński, it belongs to interwar modernism: twentieth-century architecture shaped for its own time rather than dressed in historical imitation. Its construction depended not only on bank loans and parish collections, but also on the family property sold by Father Andrzej Moliński, the parish priest who led the project.

The largest donors gained a lasting place here: their names appear in the stained glass and on the altars. One stained-glass window was funded by the father of Cardinal Franciszek Macharski. Inside, the church is arranged as three aisles carried by eight pillars, and a round dome with a lantern marks the meeting of the transept and main aisle.

Near the high altar, Saint Stephen appears as the church’s martyr patron. The building was desecrated during the German occupation, then consecrated again in 1959 by Bishop Karol Wojtyła. The furnishings also preserve an older Kraków church: a bronze font made in 1425, a sixteenth-century image of Our Lady of Consolation, and a painting of Stephen’s martyrdom dating from around 1600.