The Church of San José Venecia - Antioquia

The Church of San José is a Colombian temple of Catholic worship under the invocation of San José, it is located in the main park of the municipality of Venecia (Antioquia), and belongs to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Diocese of Caldas.

It is about a neo-Gothic church, built in solid brick with an English lock, considered, after the Cathedral of Medellín, as the largest of this material in Antioquia.

Its floor plan is a Latin cross, with three naves and two towers, as well as a facade with open rose windows. Among the interior ornaments, the main altar and the Via Crucis made of Italian marble stand out, as well as the stained glass windows with images of saints and biblical passages.

The first Venetian church was a small chapel built between 1902 and 1906, it was consecrated to Our Lady of Solitude and it was located where the police command currently operates, on the north side of the park. On August 22, 1914, Fr. Jesús Antonio Duque Rivas obtained from the Archbishop of Medellín the change of the parish's name to that of San José de Venecia, which it currently has, leaving San José as patron.

Due to the population increase of the municipality, it was necessary to have a new temple capable of housing the growing population, for which the construction of a new temple began, whose first stone was placed on March 19, 1918, located at the entrance to the sacristy, on one side of the right column; It was inaugurated twenty years later, on March 19, 1938. Its construction was directed by Salvador Ortiz, who participated in the construction of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Medellín.

On December 24, 1963, the clock was installed in one of the towers of the temple, right in some circular forms that had been left for this purpose. Said clock had been ordered to be built in 1936 in the municipality of Bello by Father Ramírez and cost 2,500.00 pesos.

In 1946, it turned out that the bells were not to the liking of the Levites, as they considered them not very powerful, which is why they were exchanged for larger ones, with a supposed greater sound capacity; When they were ready to function, the community gathered in front of the temple on the day of its inauguration, they recommended that they cover their ears because they could suffer from the powerful sound; But the surprise of the people was that the happy bells were not as powerful as they claimed, and that the ones they removed were much superior to the new ones.

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