Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Church of the Carmelite Order, 1899

■ The slaM window above the entrance to the monastery (The Church oh the Carmelite Order)

The Church of the Carmelite Order, 1899

No. 12 Huba utca, District XII

"We should not build towers without foundations. The Lord does not look at the greatness of deeds aá much as the charity from which they sprang." (St. Theresa)

As the inscription in a memorial plaque—Lapis primarius positus—in the chancel wall testifies, the foundation stone was laid on 15 October 1898. A scapular made on Mount Carmel was laid beside the deed of endowment together with fragments from the sacred house in Loreto, the catacombs in Rome, and Elijah's cave. The church was consecrated by the Bishop of Nagyvárad on the memorial day of St. Theresa Major of Avila a year later. (Theresa, a reformer of the order, founded the first "Barefoot" cloister of the Carmelites in 1562.) The high mass, attended by the king, was celebrated by Prince Primate Kolos Vaszary.

The neo-Gothic church featuring an asymmetric facade in the shape of a bevelled brick was built to plans by Antal Hofhauser (1857—1923). Standing at the corner of the building, the seventy-metre tall tower of the church tips the architectonic balance of the mass towards the square opening out in front. Connection to the convent is established by a smaller steeple on the facade outside the portal. Upstairs, next to the chancel of this single-nave hall church, there is an oratory, which is also accessible from the monastery. On its pedi'9