Nos événements

At the centre of the village of Bois-de-Villers, in the province of Namur, stands the Church of Saint Roch. It carries on a tradition of devotion reaching back to 1679, when the inhabitants raised a chapel dedicated to Saint Roch to fulfil a vow made during an outbreak of plague; the parish was established in 1683.

Only in 1837 was a true church built, incorporating the tower of 1705 and consecrated in 1841. On the night of 13 to 14 July 1965, a fire fanned by a violent storm destroyed it within hours; the old reliquary of Saint Roch was lost, but the wooden statue of the Virgin escaped the flames. Almost at once a new church was planned, entrusted to the architect Roger Bastin. Its foundation stone was laid in 1970, and the new, resolutely contemporary building was consecrated on 3 December 1972.

The church has a square plan twenty-three metres across and can hold some four hundred worshippers. Light enters through a wide bay on the altar side, opening onto a pool of water, and through tall windows that illuminate the congregation from behind. In the narthex, old tombstones — the oldest dated 1558 — recall the long history of the parish.