St. Josephat’s PNCC, Duluth, Minnesota
In follow-up to an earlier posting, The story of Polish Catholics in Duluth, here is a video production covering the history of the parish. The video was produced by Kendra Richards, a student at the University of Minnesota.
Some of the photos used in the production:
St. Josephat’s is located at 417 North Third Ave., East. They can be contacted at 218-722-7819.
A truly beautiful production and inspiring story of Polish Catholic
faith! This is what the Polish National Catholic Church was, is and will
continue to be. Thank you so much, Deacon Jim. This video should be
shared and used as an example of what other PNCC churches can do to
preserve and hand down their historic, religious heritage.
My only regret is that the parish membership, like many other Polish
Roman Catholic and Polish National Catholic central city churches, is
dwindling down to a precious few. It is our religious and historical
duty to keep these parishes alive by joining and supporting them when
possible and by encouraging and praying for priestly vocations to staff
them in the future. God helps those who help themselves, so we must do
what we can to help Polish churches survive.
Finally, let me say that it is ironic that the parish is named for an
Eastern Catholic martyr, Saint Josaphat, who died for the union of
former Eastern Orthodox Christians with the Roman Catholic Church. He
was killed by a mob of Orthodox who – depending on which version of
history you believe – punished him because he persecuted the Orthodox
or murdered him because he was so successful in converting Orthodox
into Catholics. In any case, they hacked him to death without any
mercy. Such were the religious feelings of the period. But, you can
see his Eastern vestments in the windows and read his story on the
internet.
Thanks again and keep bringing us these inspirational stories.
What Thomas said. A beautiful church. The prayers seem to be excerpts from the Rosary. ‘Symbols of different faiths’ in a church would be a problem but I just saw Christian symbols in the pictures.
Fogey,
Exactly. I think the narrator simply misspoke. In the more detailed photos I have on file all of the symbols are throughly Catholic. Because of unfamiliarity with some of the detailed symbolism she may have assumed that they represent other Christian Churches.
I’ve seen the later done, the worst example in my experience was at St. Ambrose in Buffalo. It looks like they took the link to their windows off their website due to negative PR in the R.C. community.