The bid to sell Peetri kirik

ALJA PIROSOK

On Sept. 6, pastor Salumäe spoke to his congregation from the pulpit of Toronto’s Peetri kirik of the need to liquidate and sell the church building. An emergency assembly meeting, despite rising COVID-19 rates and mounting public health concerns, was scheduled for a prompt decision on Sept. 27.

An article titled “To be, or not to be. That is the question” appeared in Estonian and English in Eesti Elu/Estonian Life and Estonian World Review. In the Local Events section in Estonian Life and in the Estonians in Canada and Estonian Churches sections of the Estonian World Review, it announced a rescheduled annual assembly meeting (cancelled April 19 due to the pandemic) and the need to vote. It was accompanied by a photo of the church from pastor Salumets, with temporary construction markers occupying in one shot roughly one third of the space.

This bid should not be happening for six important reasons. 1. Peetri kirik is not just a building, it’s architecture. That Estonians may not be as aware of the connection of architecture to spirit, as they are of the connection of music to spirit, does not mean that connection to spirit is any less vital. Neither a photograph nor a façade affords an experience of Peetri kirik as architecture.

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