Basilica of the Assumption, Cacica

The Basilica of the Assumption stands in the village of Cacica, Suceava County, close to the salt mine, and belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Iași. The village's Catholic community formed after the Habsburg administration opened the salt mine with workers brought mainly from Galicia, most of them Poles. At first the faithful were served by priests from Gura Humorului; in 1806 the chapel of St Barbara was inaugurated in the mine, and in 1810 a small wooden church was consecrated in the village. When the wooden church became too small and run-down, it was replaced by the present neo-Gothic church on a cross-shaped plan, designed by the architect Teodor Marian Talowski, a professor at the Lviv Polytechnic. The foundation stone was laid on 16 July 1903, and the church was consecrated on 16 October 1904 by Archbishop Józef Bilczewski of Lemberg. The main altar holds the icon of the Mother of God, a copy on canvas of the Częstochowa icon, probably from the early seventeenth century and brought to Cacica in the early nineteenth century. The church was declared a diocesan shrine on 15 August 1996 and a national Marian shrine in 1997. At the request of Bishop Petru Gherghel, Pope John Paul II granted it the title of minor basilica on 14 March 2000, proclaimed on 15 August 2000 by Cardinal Luigi Poggi. The main pilgrimage takes place on 14-15 August, for the feast of the Assumption, and is the largest Catholic pilgrimage in Moldavia; a second one is held in early October, for the feast of the Holy Rosary.