Christ the King Catholic Church
Catholic parish church on Matopos Road, Hillside, founded by the Mariannhill Missionaries for Bulawayo's eastern suburbs and blessed and opened on 29 November 1963.
Christ the King is the Catholic parish church of Bulawayo’s eastern suburbs. It stands on Matopos Road in Hillside. Its white walls and tall, slender bell tower stand beside the road that leads out of town towards the Matopos.
A parish for the eastern suburbs
The parish was founded by the Mariannhill Missionaries, who had taken over Catholic work in Bulawayo from the Jesuits in 1930. The parish was meant to serve Hillside, Hillcrest, Morningside and the other eastern suburbs.
Its first parish priest was Fr Elmar Schmid, who served from 1961 to 1970. The church itself was blessed and officially opened on 29 November 1963. Fr Schmid, Fr Odilo and Fr Remigius Peters were serving the parish then, in the time of Bishop Adolph Schmitt, Bulawayo’s first Catholic bishop.
Sixty years on
On 25 November 2023 the parish celebrated its diamond jubilee, sixty years after the church was opened, with the Archbishop of Bulawayo. Parishioners call themselves “the CTK family,” and the parish is nicknamed “the Royal Household.” In his homily the Archbishop praised the parish for standing firm through changing times in the archdiocese and the city. The parish priest since 2018 has been Fr Similo Ncube.
What the photographs show
Three photographs from about 2005 show the church from Matopos Road. It is a modern building with white-rendered walls and a long, plain roofline. Beside it stands a free-standing square bell tower, tall and narrow, with louvred openings near the top and a cross above. One photograph shows the signboard, “Christ the King Catholic Church,” behind a decorative concrete screen wall. Another shows a tall, narrow window running up the end wall, with flowering shrubs in front.
What we don’t know yet
- Who designed the church, and who built it. Its clean, modern lines are typical of churches built in the early 1960s.
- Where Mass was said before 1963. Fr Schmid was parish priest from 1961, two years before the church opened. One church directory gives 1959 as a date in the parish’s history. What happened in those first years?
- Your Christ the King. First communions, weddings, the Christmas midnight Mass, the youth groups. Did you grow up in this parish? We would love to hear from you, and to see your photographs.
Sources
- Isibane, Catholic Archdiocese of Bulawayo, December 2023: “Christ the King parish celebrates its diamond jubilee”, with the parish’s history and the list of its priests.
- GCatholic.org, “Church of Christ the King, Bulawayo”.
- Catholic Archdiocese of Bulawayo, parish listing: “Christ the King Parish, Hillside”.
2 photographs of Christ the King Catholic Church →
Do you know more about this? Corrections, photographs and your own account are all welcome, and a correction is published on the page with the date it was made. Send something in.