The Church of St Catherine is located on a scenic viewpoint. It was built in the late Middle Ages and was first mentioned around 1500. It used to be known as a pilgrimage church which wisdom-seeking pilgrims visited on St Catherine’s Day (25 November). The pilgrimage ceremony inspired a local custom, where farmers from Zasip and Mužje alternated in offering a cow, called bavha, as a feast for the pilgrims and the locals. This custom was lost with the abolition of the pilgrimage route during the reign of the Emperor Joseph II. The area also had a custom called žaganje babe (witch sawing), a traditional event of sawing a log on the third Wednesday before Easter. A known prank on this day was that anybody coming to Hom barefoot on that day would be gifted red shoes. The “red shoes” were, of course, nothing more but reddened feet from the cold.
The Church of St Catherine is also famous for a real treasure. Three men from Kanal in the Primorska region dug up a treasure of significant value in front of the church in autumn of 1860. Once the authorities learned about the discovery, they launched an investigation in Radovljica, Kanal, and Gorica, but they were ultimately unsuccessful at locating the treasure. All they could discover was that a French General had allegedly buried the treasure before leaving for war. The story continued to fire the imagination of the following generations, and many children and adults have been seen over the years nosing around the church searching for any remains of the treasure the three men from Kanal might have left behind.
