Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Istanbul
The Church of Our Lady of Lourdes is a historic Georgian-Catholic church in the district of Bomonti of the Istanbul district of Şişli in Turkey., the church is still in use and one of the few Georgian Catholic churches in the world.
It was built in 1861 with the cooperation of the Catholic priest Peter Kharischirashvili, who wished to provide a rite in the Georgian language. In the 1950s, up to 10,000 ethnic Georgians of the Catholic faith lived in Istanbul. After the Istanbul pogrom in 1955 under Adnan Menderes, many Georgians emigrated. Today the Georgian-Catholic community numbers only 200 to 250 people. As the number of Georgian Catholic Christians in Istanbul has declined, a large part of the church community today consists of ethnic Armenians and Turkish Catholics.
