SANCTUAIRE SAINT-JEAN DE PODMILAČJE

Housing a beautiful contemporary church, this Catholic shrine (Svetište Svetog Ive Krstitelja) is located along the Vrbas River, next to Podmilačje (population 650, 97% Bosnian-Croat). Due to unexplained healings, the site was considered the "Lourdes of Bosnia" before the emergence of Međugorje, near Mostar, in the 1980s.

History. The origin of the shrine dates back to the crusade launched by the papacy against the Bosnian Bogomils in the 13th century. After several bloody episodes, the Dominican intellectual Johannes von Wildeshausen (who died in Strasbourg in 1252) was appointed bishop of Bosnia in 1233 and took the opposite direction of his predecessors. He took the opposite approach to his predecessors. Conducting his mission in a peaceful manner and travelling around the province with a donkey, he had some success in converting the local population. As a sign of protest against the hold of the kingdom of Hungary on Bosnia, he resigned in 1237. Wildeshausen is from then on considered as a saint in Bosnia. In 1416, Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, ban of Croatia and founder of Jajce, had a small church erected in Podmilačje officially dedicated to St. John the Baptist but designed for the worship of "St. John of Wildeshausen." Controlled by the Franciscans, it continued to attract pilgrims, especially after 1945 when about fifty "miracles" took place. But the church was razed in 1992 by the Bosnian Serb army. It was in the context of its reconstruction that the project of a contemporary building capable of accommodating more believers was launched.

Visit. The site is surprising and magnificent. Here two recent churches dedicated to St. John the Baptist stand side by side, but in diametrically opposed styles: a replica of the small medieval stone church (15.85 x 8.50 m) and the large modernist spiral of the new church. The complex is ideally located on the bank of a meander of the Vrbas river and surrounded by the green hills of the Podmila valley, which are over 700 m high. These hills also have the advantage of hiding the huge cement factory next door. But at least, it was not necessary to look very far to build the new church. It is indeed a huge structure made of raw concrete that was built in 2003. Consecrated in 2010, the church is the work of Slovenian architect Marko Mušič. Born in 1941, he worked in Yugoslavia during the socialist period. He is also responsible for the Catholic church in Kotor Varoš (54 km to the north), completed in 1999 and admittedly not very successful. In Podmilačje, on the other hand, Mušič used all his talent in composing with nature. To support the building, he had a hill dug in the manner of a Greek theater. The central element is the south wall of the church: it is widely open, allowing light to enter the 3,000^m2 nave, and then gradually rises to spiral up to form the bell tower, which is 62 m high, twice the height of the stone church tower. It should be seen as a symbol of a community in perpetual extension. The shape of the spiral reinforces this idea, with a bell tower that seems never to end. The design is also functional, as the sanctuary is designed to accommodate more than 100,000 worshippers on St. John's Day (around June 21), both in the modern church and on its large grassy square with an open-air altar.