Mother Church 2020

Mother Church, 2020/21

terracotta, 65 x 36 x 25 cm (Terra Center, Kikinda collection)

production: Center for Fine and Applied Arts, Kininda

curator: Slobodan Kojić

photos: Photo Studio Sretenović, artist

MOTHER CHURCH or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother in her functions of nourishing and protecting the believer. It may also refer to the primary church of a Christian denomination or diocese, i.e. a cathedral or a metropolitan church. For a particular individual, one’s mother church is the church in which one received the sacrament of baptism. The term has specific meanings within different Christian traditions.

The “first see”, or primatial see, of a regional or national church is sometimes referred to as the mother church of that nation. For example, the local Church of Armagh is the primatial see of Ireland, because it was the first established local Church in that country. Similarly, Rome is the primatial see of Italy, and Baltimore of the United States, and so on. The first local church in all of Christianity is that of Jerusalem, the site of the Passion of the Christ and of Pentecost, making it the Mother Church of all Christianity.

Wikipedia