The southernmost churches in the world are in Antarctica

In the coldest, dry and ventoso continent, life is very different from how we are accustomed in other areas of the world.Not even in cold places the day -to -day life of people looks like a day in the territory with the highest average altitude of all continents.An ice desert, that is Antarctica, where annual rainfall barely reaches 200 mm in coastal areas, much less inside. Lluvia no, pero el frío es su mayor característica:​ a temperatura en este lugar ha llegado a alcanzar los -89,2 °C, aunque la media en los meses del tercer trimestre (la parte más fría del año) es de -63 °C.In 2016, 135 permanent residents had registered, but among its inhospitable landscape the communities are mostly research stations, in which they reside between 1.000 and 5.000 people throughout the year.Science has been, centuries, trying more to understand the world from this unqualable corner, and continues to surprise daily with ever seen phenomena that are drawing new threads between the origin of the world and the future of this.

Facred by climate change, the native organisms of this continent include an infinity of types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, the true inhabitants of their landscape.However, the decades of research around the latter, including its agencies, has established a more or less standard population dispersed by many of its corners.And to seek meaning to the world, also there and also science, they have thrown from religion.Among the ice in all its forms, in addition to more ice there are some churches.There are few, but each more curious:

Chapel of Our Lady of the Nieves

One of the buildings located further south of the world is curiously a religious building.Whether or not believer, this place will satisfy your sense of curiosity.A 1.300 kilometers from the South Pole, at the Argentine Base of Belgrano II, there are scientists who also pray.As the task is everyday, it was decided to build a place so that the approximately 20 people living in the area could attend Mass.Scientists, researchers and army members of Argentina meet there, at -10 ºC, covered with several layers of thermal clothing.

The funny thing is that to build it, no metal or fiberglass panels were used filled with polyurethane, as used to build the rest of the buildings that make up the base, with the idea that they offered the essential thermal insulation to resist low temperatures.This Catholic chapel is the opposite: it is dug in the ice itself, which serves as a structure for the entire interior.And if in the churches that we all know there are crosses and other religious symbols everywhere, in this they could not miss.Always covered with frost, images of several virgins and a crucified Christ remain, to an altar and several chairs looking at the same.All covered with an intense blue light that arises from the ice itself.Beyond religion, the beauty of its interior space sure covers you of peace and the occasional chill.

One of the characteristics of the landscape that surrounds it (and covers it) and that determines the light inside is that, as a consequence of latitude, there are four months of day, four of gloom (day and night) and four at night polar.Sometimes, on the prayers of its inhabitants, polar auroras of the night sky fall.

Nieves Chapel

His name is similar to that of the previous one, and it is not surprising because around them everything is snow.However, this is very different, but no less special.Located at the American Mcdo base, on Ross Island, it is the second most southern religious temple in the world.His particularity is that chaplains rotate between Catholics and Protestants.That is, during a season, specifically during the Southern Summer months, a few days ago of Catholic Temple and others of Protestant Temple.But not only that, its space is also used for religious meetings of Mormons, Baha'i, Buddhists even non -religious groups such as anonymous alcoholics, meetings chaired by lay people.

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Its origin dates back to 1956, when the original chapel was built.However, after a fire in 1978, it had to be demolished and replaced by a new temporal chapel.That improvised building was subsequently converted for other uses when the current chapel was projected at the end of 1980.Its peculiar Nordic structure consists of a small nartex on which a low tower rests.The choir combines a great semicircular bay with a stained glass window that represents the Holy Cross.Also, its altar belonged to the ST.Saviour’s Chapel, an Anglican chapel located in Lyttelton, in New Zealand.Inside there are just over 60 people.Taking into account that MC Murdo is the largest community in Antarctica, with capacity for 1.258 residents, in this case the believers believers of the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National Foundation for Science that has its logistics center there, perhaps they have to queue for prayer.

Chapel of Santa María Reina de la Paz

At the end of the 20th century another chapel in Antarctica was also built, but on the other side of Argentina.Within the Magallanes region and Chilean Antarctica, specifically in Villa Las Estrellas, is this construction style chapel similar to the previous one, with the difference that it is a purely Catholic cult center.That is a metal building, modified in such a way to resemble a common temple, whose interior has electricity and an adequate heating system for the temperatures below zero that are reached in the area.Religious ceremonies are performed by a deacon who lives permanently in the town.

San Juan de Rila Chapel

Another of the most curious Antarctica of Antarctica is this Orthodox chapel located at the Bulgarian Research Station, at the San Clemente de Ohrid base of Livingston Island, in the Southern Shetland.It was the first orthodox temple in the continent and the southernmost one until the construction of the San Vladimir chapel at the Vernadsky Base of Ukraine in 2011.It belongs to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.Not only is it its location, but also its peculiar form that attracts attention: it is a small trapezoidal building of 3.5 meters per 12 meters made with red metal that rests on small pillars.

Built in 2003, inside it has a bell donated by Nikola Vasilev, former Vice Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who worked as a doctor at the base between 1993 and 1994, also a cross donated by the Bulgarian artist said Kapushev, an icon of Jesus Christmarried by Bulgarian artist Georgi Dimov and an icon from San Juan de Rila donated by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.

Church of the Holy Trinity

On a small island where 90% of the surface is covered by ice is this Russian Orthodox Church with many kilometers between its walls.Specifically located on Rey Jorge Island or Island 25 de Mayo, within the South Shetland archipelago, it is part of an area where the Bellingshausen Russian scientific base and the Chilean stations Professor Julio Escudero and President Eduardo Frei Montalva.But the foundations of this place did not arise where it is now: the temple was built thousands of kilometers from there, in the Russian village of Kyzyl-Ozék.Because?Because it was considered that, to carry out the construction, the Russian cold accompanies better than cold from Antarctica.In this way, the architects and engineers who lifted it sought how to make a building that could be transported "to the other side of the world", and said: they built a "folding" church that could be put together and disassembled easily.

According to the BBC, in the autumn of 2003, the building of the building was packaged, which moved into trucks to the port of Kaliningrad where it was collected by a ship, which sailed with the church inside for a month towards the Shetland Islands ofSouth.Once at his destination, eight people helped unpack and mount it again.Since January 2004, he receives almost 500 visits every year.Inside, the temperature is 20 degrees (here praying is not so close) and on its walls there are paintings of angels and birds flying between golden tones.The images are always accompanied by choir music that sounds at all hours, but no, there is no one to sing live, it is a recorded tape.It should be noted that, of the seven religious temples distributed in Antarctica, this is the only one where Russian Orthodox Christianity professes.

Norway Anglican Church of Grytviken

To the south of the Antarctic Convergence is the Norwegian Anglican Church of Grytviken, known as Norway Lutheran Church or Church of the Balleneros, although, despite its name, it is currently part of the Church of England.It is one the oldest on the list and, like the previous one, its current location was not its place of origin.The building was prefabricated in Norway and erected in Grytviken by a group of whales between 1912 and 1913, hence its common name.It has been operational since Christmas Day of 1913, although it has suffered periods of abandonment.

Located at the foot of the Allardyce Range mountain range, it is a kind of white -painted wooden ship, in the Norwegian neo -Gothic style, which leads to a small altar through a corridor with long wooden benches.Inside, you can access by a ladder to a second floor located at the entrance of the Church, in the form of a viewpoint towards the landscape inside or outside it.Inside there is also a library, in an attached room, to the left of the altar.

Notre-Dame des Vents

Within Port-aux-Français, in the Kerguelen Islands of the French southern and Antarctic land.It is a small cement building, rectangularly and with flat roof, painted white.Following a much more modern architecture than the previous ones, its proportions are based on the year number.At the ceiling base, small rectangular stained glass windows serve as an ornament contrasting with a large concrete pillars structure that includes a cross.It is considered as the southernmost French church.