St. Altfrid

The church of Sankt Altfrid is the Catholic parish church in Gifhorn, a district town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is named after the holy Hildesheim bishop and cathedral builder Altfrid and is located at Pommernring 2. The parish of the same name belongs to the Wolfsburg-Helmstedt deanery of the Diocese of Hildesheim. The parish also includes the churches of St. Bernward in Gifhorn and St. Andreas in Meine. The St. Altfrid daycare center, which is located next to the church, also belongs to the community.

In 1970, a pastor came to Gifhorn to found a second Catholic parish in the south of the city in addition to the already existing St. Bernward parish. Initially, the services took place in the Protestant Martin Luther Church. In 1971, the foundation stone for the St. Altfrid Church was laid, and on April 30, 1972, it was consecrated by Auxiliary Bishop Heinrich Pachowiak. From 1973 St. Altfrid was an independent parish, before that the church belonged to the St. Bernward parish. In 1974/75, the neighboring daycare center was built. In 1993, the parish of St. Altfrid was elevated to a parish. In 1996, the Gifhorn-Meine pastoral care unit was formed, which included the churches of St. Altfrid and St. Bernward in Gifhorn as well as St. Andreas in Meine and St. Maria Goretti in Meinersen. In 2001, a new community center was inaugurated because the community rooms had become too small. On 1 August 2004, the parish of St. Altfrid Gifhorn/Meinen emerged from the pastoral care unit, comprising the four churches of the former pastoral care unit. Since 1 November 2006, the church has belonged to the then newly founded deanery of Wolfsburg-Helmstedt, previously it belonged to the deanery of Wolfsburg. In 2014, the St. Maria Goretti Church in Meinersen was profaned. On July 26, 2018, the Abrahams Kinder daycare center was opened, which is jointly supported by the Catholic St. Altfrid parish, the Muslim DİTİB mosque community in Gifhorn and the Evangelical Lutheran Diakonie. According to its own information, this is the first facility of its kind in Germany.

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