St. Peter and Paul Church in Pušalotas

The St. Apostles Peter and Paul Church is in street Dičiūnai in Pušalotas, Pasvalys district, 2.6 km to the west of Pumpėnai. This wooden Church was built in 1853 and it is of folk architecture type with a Latin cross plan (31.5 by 11.5 m). There are three-sided apses, a tower and three altars. In 1639, the Church received 360 hectares of land and about 100 tithes of forest. In 1708, the priest Mykolas Baukevičius took care to rebuilt the Church. In 1820, it had 200 hectares of land with the villages Ožkyčiai and Pazukai. In 1853, the landowner Pranciškus Karpis and parishioners funded the Church and it was increased. The parish priest Feliksas Vereika, who was a priest for a long time (from about 1822 to 1882), was buried in the churchyard. He made a stone fence of the cemetery; in 1879, heightened the Church, built chapels to the two sides of Church and established an Organ in 1882. In the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a parish school. From 1855 to 1862, the parish priest was Antanas Juška (1819–1880), who not only renewed the Church, built a rectory, but also collected folklore. From 1896 to 1912, the parish priest Jonas Jaškevičius sponsored the distribution of the prohibited press and organized the secret Lithuanian schools. In 1898, he built an alms-house with a parish hall. A brick belfry stands in the churchyard, where there is a stone fence.