The role of modern parishes in the transformation of industrial Upper Silesian towns.

Henryk Olszar

Faculty of Theology of the Silesian University

Abstract

The Catholic Church in Upper Silesia did not neglect its salvific role in the period of change to the social, economic and cultural life in the years of expansion and industrial concentration at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its representatives – clergy and laity – intensified religious life in parallel with the demographic and economic development of the Upper Silesian Industrial District, which was related to the construction of new places of worship and the creation of new parishes. The parish communities somehow stopped visitors and integrated them with the locals through a framework of devotions or the construction of temples

Keywords:

Upper Silesia, Church, industrialization, urbanization