Motif: The facade of the Bjelovar chatedral The town of Bjelovar was built for strategic reasons in the middle of the 18th century, i.e. in 1756, in the period of the Military Border; on its founding in two locations there reports its contemporary Baltazar Adam Krčelić, the canon and historian from Zagreb, in his famous work Annuae sive historia… 1748-1767. Soon, upon invitation by the Military government, Austrian Piarists, by birth Czechs, the brothers Hubert and Ignacius Diviš, the founders of the Bjelovar schooling system, come to Bjelovar. The versatile Father Hubert becomes the superior of the convent, school director, school supervisor for elementary schools, chapel master in charge of military music and annalist (precious is the Historia Parochiae et Domus Bellovariensis Anno M.DCC.LXI... in his handwriting, today treasured in rectory). H. Diviš is introduced by canon in the governance of the newly founded parish in 1772, which at that time separated from the parish of St Mary Magdalene - Kapela. He died in 1790 in his 57th year, after 35 years of service as a monk, whereof 30 years in Bjelovar. He was buried in the crypt of the baroque St. Cross Chapel, in the old St. Andrew Cemetery in Bjelovar. One of the first religious buildings in the newly built town of Maria Theresia was the parish church of St. Theresa. Its building began on 10 April 1765. A new, single-nave building of a rectangular ground plan, 10x 8 meters in size, with the semicircle sanctuary and the bell tower - divided with pilasters, half-capitals and niches, that soon became a major urban vertical of this border town, was completed in 1771 – which is evidenced by the Chronogram, produced in relief on the back side of the secondary used roman grave stela from the 2nd century with a mythological depiction of the escape of Iphigenia in Tauris, incorporated in the main portal lunette. In the Bjelovar Town Museum a project from the 18th century of the ground and the first floor of the newly built Military church and the monastery, and its honourable P.P. Piarist College is safeguarded. The scale 24 Wienna’s fathoms (Klafter). Simon Ignaty Wagner, the artisan carpenter of the king’s Major Headquarters of Varaždin - Bellovar. The clock was built into the tower in 1772, and that same year on St. Theresa day, on 15 October 1772, the church was blessed. On the same holiday in 1775 the bishop of Zagreb, Josip Galjuf, consecrated it. In June 1772 the foundations were laid for two one-storey side-buildings, organically connected with the new church - the college and the school (the so called Piarist complex) – to be completed two years later. The church and the side-buildings were built in a late baroque-classicist style and today are the first-category monuments: in the left wing there is the state archive, and in the right wing the parish office. At that time Bjelovar was the centre of the Varaždin Headquarters of the Military Border with the Đurđevac and Križevci regiments that in 1777 and in 1778 in the very centre of the town erected four sculptures by the unknown Varaždin craftsman: St. Theresa of Avil, St. John Nepomuk, St. Helen Crusaders and St. George. The first five altar paintings from the 18th century were painted by the famous Varaždin painter – without any artistic value but with lot of effects, as witnessed by the painter Thomas Marzik to whom they were sent in 1848 to Vienna for restoration, but have never been returned. And in 1940 - according to the writing o Kamilo Dočkal, the Zagreb canon and the first director of the Diocese Museum, in the parish church of Bjelovar one marvellous and unsigned painting of the bishop in regalia, which is among the most beautiful paintings of the entire Diocese Museum, was created. It was painted on a quality Italian canvas, suggesting an Italian master and dates from the first half of the 18th centur, if not from an even earlier date. The painting was found in the attic of the rectory, once a Piarist monastery and possibly is the only remainder from the Bjelovar Piarists. After the earthquake in 1880 that damaged the church, it has been renewed by Hermann Bollé, designer and conservator of the Zagreb Cathedral. In1888, the Zagreb painter I. Clausen with the assistance of eight helpers painted the church. The three altars and five altar sculptures and the pulpit are the work of the sculptors I. Franz and D. Morlak, Professors of the School of Handicrafts in Zagreb. In the year 1901 new organ with two manuals and 12 registers by the company Rieger has been installed. All painted windows representing St. Peter and Paul and St. Cyril and Methodius (according to the template by H. Bolléa), as well as those of St. George and St. Aloysius have been created by the manufacturer Karl Gleyling from Vienna. In the period of the First World War the church was deprived of its belles and there remained only a small bell cinkuš from 1772; in 1924 the church received three new bells: the bell of St. Theresa, tone F, weight 930 kg, the bell of St. Mary, tone AS weight 450 kg, and the bell of St. Joseph, tone C, weight 260 kg. In the already mentioned year 1888, on 12 September, in the ceremony hall on the first floor of the Bjelovar Town Hall (today the building of the Town Museum) in the presence of many national and foreign church dignitaries the bishop of Đakovo and Srijem region, J. J. Strossmayer, was rebuked by the Emperor and King Franz Joseph I (in Croatian and European history this event is known as the „Bjelovar affair“). After that unpleasant event the Zagreb archbishop at that time, J. Mihalović and J. J. Strossmayer, togather with the bishop of Senj, Posilović, and the Greek Catholic bishop of Križevci, Hranilović, gathered behind closed doors in the first floor of the rectory after which event all three bishops left Bjelovar by coach, ignoring the Emperor’s invitation to a festive lunch. When on 19th and 20th June 1935 the Eucharistic Congress was held in Bjelovar in the St. Theresa Church, the mass was celebrated by the Zagreb Archbishop and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac. In the fights for Bjelovar on 29th September 1991 the church was damaged by tank shells. The mass for the fallen in Homeland War was celebrated in this church by Cardinal Franjo Kuharić. This church is occasionally visited also by the Zagreb Cardinal Josip Bozanić. At the time of the rector Josip Stipančević (the 24th rector of this parish from Huberta Diviš till today) and by the Bull of the Pope Benedict XVI, on 5th December 2009 the Bjelovar-Križevci diocese was established. Bjelovar became its seat, the parish church of St.Theresa of Avil the cathedral, and the first bishop Vjekoslav Huzjak was pronounced on 20 March 2010. Mladen Medar
