Pfarrkirche Leonstein

The Roman Catholic parish church of Leonstein stands on a hill above the village of the same name in Grünburg, Upper Austria. It is dedicated to Saint Stephen and protected as a listed monument. A cemetery surrounds the building, and the churchyard slopes gently downhill to the east.

The church began as a small chapel built by the Rohrer family around 1320. In 1367 it became an independent parish, and a century later the Zelkingers added a second chapel above the first, completed in 1519. After the Counter-Reformation the building was enlarged and reconsecrated in 1743. Inside, the nave measures 18 metres by 7.5 metres, and the choir three metres deep. A late-18th-century high altar was replaced in the 1960s by a modern marble table, while the old altar painting of Saint Stephen now hangs beside the rococo pulpit.

Visitors enter through the north door into a single-aisled nave under a flat barrel vault. The choir at the east end is roofed with a similar vault and ends in a three-sided apse. On the south wall hangs a late-Gothic Madonna from the mid-15th century. The north chapel contains a copy of the Madonna del Buon Consiglio attributed to Leopold Kupelwieser. Outside, the west tower rises 30 metres above the hilltop, and the cemetery below holds a 2019 monument to the 17th-century priest Georg Matthäus Vischer.