University Church: “New University Church on the Innrain” celebrates 30 years
Effective 1 Jan In 1993, at the request of Bishop Reinhold Stecher and with the decision of the Bishops’ Council of December 7, 1992, the Johanneskirche was designated the “New University Church on the Innrain”. The first service of the university parish, until then a guest in the Mariahilfkirche, was held on January 17th. Celebrated in 1993 in what is now the university’s own parish church.
INNSBRUCK. In 1721, the court building clerk Josef Hyacinth Dörflinger, who had taken a corresponding vow, built the first small chapel on the Innrain in honor of Saint John. Just a few years later, in the immediate vicinity of this chapel, work began on building a larger church towards the city centre. The new building, also planned by Dörflinger and managed by private fundraisers, was built between 1729 and 1732 according to the plans of the court architect Georg Anton Gumpp.
pastoral work
It was only in 1748 that the priest Franz Xaver Malamorth, presented by Empress Maria Theresa, was able to take up the office of full-time permanent pastor of the Johanneskirche after a compromise with the consent of the Bishop of Brixen as an “imperial beneficiary”, albeit initially only as a “provisional” because still no formal letter of deed was issued. The actual and regular pastoral work at the Johanneskirche began with Malamorth in 1748. With legal effect from January 1, 1993, Bishop Reinhold Stecher raised the Johanneskirche to the parish church of the university church founded in 1980 and gave it the name “New University Church St. Johannes am Innrain”.
The ceremonial handover by the bishop to the university and the university parish took place on March 14, 1993 in the presence of the rector and the academic senate, the governor and the mayor, the abbot of Wilten and many secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries.
In the course of 2013, after the sudden death of the bishop, the city of Innsbruck erected the “Bischof Reinhold Stecher-Platz” in front of the church at the request of the university parish. The church, originally on the outskirts of the city, is now in the center of a district in which the Leopold Franzens University and the Medical University and their various facilities and institutes, clinics, libraries, dormitories and canteens are located. In any case, the church is open during the lecture period from Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
John