Schafbergkirche, Catholic church in Dornbach, Hernals, Vienna, Austria.
The Schafbergkirche is a Roman Catholic church at Josef-Redl-Gasse 25 in Vienna's Dornbach district, Hernals. Designed by architect Franz Graf, it is a plain building with echoes of Neo-Romanesque style, a southern choir tower and a recessed apse. A sacristy and a baptistery are attached on the east side.
The site held a meadow with a barracks used as a provisional lung sanatorium and later a children's home until the 1930s. Services began there in 1934 under the Ständestaat, and during the war the barracks served as a military hospital. The Dornbach parish bought the land in 1947; construction to Franz Graf's design started in 1950 and, funded largely by donations, was completed in 1970.
The church is popularly called Juristenkirche because the annual Juristenmesse is held around the feast day of Thomas More, to which Vienna's lawyers are invited. The name Schafberg refers to the hill, not to sheep grazing. A Thomas More bust by Hans Stidl stands in front of the building.
The church stands at Josef-Redl-Gasse 25 in the Dornbach district, on a 342 m hill of the Schafberg, visible from afar. The Lawyers' Mass is held annually around the feast day of Thomas More; the building is a listed monument.
The tabernacle door on the left side altar is a stone from the head crypt of Thomas More in Canterbury. Outside stands a stele with a Thomas More bust by Hans Stidl, made around 1970, and a wayside shrine with an iron Madonna, a copy by Franz Staffler after Tilman Riemenschneider.
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