Perpetu Socors

Església de Nostra Senyora de Perpetu Socors
Built: 1948-1958
Founded: 1928
Function: Parish church; chapel of religious community
Address: Balmes 98-100

The church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a beautiful 20th century structure, built in a traditional, Baroque basilica style. This type of architecture is not native to Barcelona, and one would more likely expect to see such a church in Rome or Vienna. However it is one example of several types of churches in this rather grand style which were built in the city after the Civil War, typically by wealthier parish communities.

In 1926, Redemptorist priest Ramón Sarabia y Barbero arrived in Barcelona to help strengthen and promote the work of the Redemptorists already working in the city. With his leadership by 1928 the Fathers were able to rent, and later purchase, a building on the Carrer Balmes in the center of the Eixample, the newly expanded downtown grid of Barcelona. It was in this building that the first chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was dedicated.

The Redemptorist center became a home base for the promotion of Catholic social life and evangelization in the city during the leadup to the Spanish Civil War, and served as the chapel for the Cristo Rey (“Christ the King”) society. When the Leftists took over in 1936, the building was sacked and the chapel desecrated. After the war the Redemptorists returned, by they needed a new building. The result, the work of architect Joaquim Porqueres i Banyeres between 1948 and 1958, and frescoed by Josep Mestres i Cabanes, is a grand, Baroque Revival structure that would look perfectly at home in the Eternal City, and is one of the few exemplars of this type of architecture in Barcelona. Interestingly enough, in recent years the Ukranian Catholic community in Barcelona has been sharing the parish for the celebration of the mass in the Byzantine Rite.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any large, good images of the church, but these smaller ones will at least give you some idea of its beauty: