The city’s Pilsen neighborhood used to be home to Polish immigrants. Now it’s mostly Latino. Both groups see much at stake in the fate of a replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà.
Judy Vazquez, left, and other protesters had sought to prevent the removal of the Pietà statue from the shuttered St. Adalbert Church in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
By Julie Bosman
Photographs by Todd HeislerDec. 17, 2022
CHICAGO — On a cold Tuesday morning in Chicago, police officers lined an alley on the West Side. Across a chain-link fence, a group of people in parkas paced nervously in a backyard.
Then the officers stepped aside. A three-ton statue wrapped in blue cloths was loaded from the vacant St. Adalbert Church onto the bed of a truck, beginning its slow journey down the alley.
Even shrouded in blankets, the statue had a lifelike quality: It was a replica, still visible in silhouette, of Michelangelo’s Pietà, the marbled figure of Mary cradling the body of Jesus.
“Don’t take her away!” shouted Judy Vazquez, one of the people in the backyard, as the statue passed by.
“Alleluia!” said another protester, Bronislawa Stekala, clutching a rosary of brown wooden beads and raising her fist in anger.
For more than five years, a group of Polish and Latino Catholics from Chicago and its suburbs has been waging a fierce but quixotic fight against the Archdiocese of Chicago.
By Julie Bosman
Photographs by Todd HeislerDec. 17, 2022
CHICAGO — On a cold Tuesday morning in Chicago, police officers lined an alley on the West Side. Across a chain-link fence, a group of people in parkas paced nervously in a backyard.
Then the officers stepped aside. A three-ton statue wrapped in blue cloths was loaded from the vacant St. Adalbert Church onto the bed of a truck, beginning its slow journey down the alley.
Even shrouded in blankets, the statue had a lifelike quality: It was a replica, still visible in silhouette, of Michelangelo’s Pietà, the marbled figure of Mary cradling the body of Jesus.
“Don’t take her away!” shouted Judy Vazquez, one of the people in the backyard, as the statue passed by.
“Alleluia!” said another protester, Bronislawa Stekala, clutching a rosary of brown wooden beads and raising her fist in anger.
For more than five years, a group of Polish and Latino Catholics from Chicago and its suburbs has been waging a fierce but quixotic fight against the Archdiocese of Chicago.
For many Polish and Latino Catholics in Pilsen, the church and statue have served as reminders of their history in the community.
The statue as it was removed from St. Adalbert. The church has been closed since 2019.
Judy Vazquez, left, visiting the Pietà at its new home nearby, St. Paul Catholic Church.
They first objected to the closure in 2019 of St. Adalbert, a towering brick structure in the Pilsen neighborhood, part of a wave of parish consolidations tied to shrinking attendance and the exorbitant cost of repairing antiquated buildings. Then the group turned its efforts to the statue inside, which was slated to be moved to another Catholic parish, St. Paul, a mile away.
Their mission was about more than the statue. For the Polish members of the group, the church and the statue were monuments to their ancestors and a reminder of their ties to Pilsen, which was once an entry point in Chicago for Polish immigrants. For the Latinos, the fight was to preserve community anchors including churches, as the neighborhood becomes increasingly gentrified and working-class Mexican families are being forced out by rising rents.
“If they sell the property of St. Adalbert’s, it’s going to change the fabric of Pilsen,” Ms. Vazquez said. “This is unacceptable that they want to sell every piece of church property to developers. The developers will have carte blanche. They’re going to continue to develop Pilsen. They’ll take the culture away from the neighborhood.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago says the changes reflect reality: The number of weekend churchgoers at St. Adalbert had shrunk to about 200, far less than is needed to sustain a church of its size. And the building required millions in repairs because of its crumbling brick facade, a decades-old problem that was explained in detail to parishioners before St. Adalbert merged with a neighboring parish.
Moving the statue to that parish, also in Pilsen, will give the beloved Pietà a home, the archdiocese said, a place where it can be protected and preserved for the community.
They first objected to the closure in 2019 of St. Adalbert, a towering brick structure in the Pilsen neighborhood, part of a wave of parish consolidations tied to shrinking attendance and the exorbitant cost of repairing antiquated buildings. Then the group turned its efforts to the statue inside, which was slated to be moved to another Catholic parish, St. Paul, a mile away.
Their mission was about more than the statue. For the Polish members of the group, the church and the statue were monuments to their ancestors and a reminder of their ties to Pilsen, which was once an entry point in Chicago for Polish immigrants. For the Latinos, the fight was to preserve community anchors including churches, as the neighborhood becomes increasingly gentrified and working-class Mexican families are being forced out by rising rents.
“If they sell the property of St. Adalbert’s, it’s going to change the fabric of Pilsen,” Ms. Vazquez said. “This is unacceptable that they want to sell every piece of church property to developers. The developers will have carte blanche. They’re going to continue to develop Pilsen. They’ll take the culture away from the neighborhood.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago says the changes reflect reality: The number of weekend churchgoers at St. Adalbert had shrunk to about 200, far less than is needed to sustain a church of its size. And the building required millions in repairs because of its crumbling brick facade, a decades-old problem that was explained in detail to parishioners before St. Adalbert merged with a neighboring parish.
Moving the statue to that parish, also in Pilsen, will give the beloved Pietà a home, the archdiocese said, a place where it can be protected and preserved for the community.
People holding a vigil behind St. Adalbert also paid tribute to victims of gun violence.
St. Adalbert was closed because repairs to its crumbling building would have cost millions of dollars.
A celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe outside St. Adalbert.
“We understand that change is difficult and many have worshiped at St. Adalbert or have family history with the church,” Manuel Gonzales, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said in an email. “We truly hope the small number of former St. Adalbert parishioners, who are among the protesters, will join with their neighbors to help the unification succeed.”
I watched the protesters one morning in November as they gathered for one of their regular prayer sessions in the alley. They drank coffee, shared memories of the church and prayed the rosary with their eyes lowered. Most of the group carried memories of what St. Adalbert was like more than a half-century ago, when it was a thriving parish with a school and a vast convent that was home to dozens of nuns.
Byron Sigcho-Lopez, the alderman who represents Pilsen on the Chicago City Council, stood among the prayer group, recalling all the history of the church and the multicultural effort to save it. In front of St. Adalbert, a faded sign still notes a Mass schedule, with separate services in Polish and Spanish.
“Both communities are trying to save St. Adalbert,” he said. “It’s a sacred and important site for both communities.”
Mr. Sigcho-Lopez had pushed for a zoning change that would give the community more input into the fate of the church building, should it be sold.
“The objective is to find somebody that could repurpose the building,” said Raul Serrato, a member of the finance council at St. Paul. “That’s been the difficulty because obviously nobody, including us, wants the building torn down. It’s a beautiful structure.”
“We understand that change is difficult and many have worshiped at St. Adalbert or have family history with the church,” Manuel Gonzales, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said in an email. “We truly hope the small number of former St. Adalbert parishioners, who are among the protesters, will join with their neighbors to help the unification succeed.”
I watched the protesters one morning in November as they gathered for one of their regular prayer sessions in the alley. They drank coffee, shared memories of the church and prayed the rosary with their eyes lowered. Most of the group carried memories of what St. Adalbert was like more than a half-century ago, when it was a thriving parish with a school and a vast convent that was home to dozens of nuns.
Byron Sigcho-Lopez, the alderman who represents Pilsen on the Chicago City Council, stood among the prayer group, recalling all the history of the church and the multicultural effort to save it. In front of St. Adalbert, a faded sign still notes a Mass schedule, with separate services in Polish and Spanish.
“Both communities are trying to save St. Adalbert,” he said. “It’s a sacred and important site for both communities.”
Mr. Sigcho-Lopez had pushed for a zoning change that would give the community more input into the fate of the church building, should it be sold.
“The objective is to find somebody that could repurpose the building,” said Raul Serrato, a member of the finance council at St. Paul. “That’s been the difficulty because obviously nobody, including us, wants the building torn down. It’s a beautiful structure.”
After St. Adalbert was closed in 2019, a group of parishioners still held regular vigils outside.
A sheet of plywood covers a hole at St. Adalbert.
A prayer session in the alley behind St. Adalbert.
On the day of the statue’s removal, Ms. Vazquez and the other members of her group would not let it leave without a fight.
For weeks, they had waited anxiously, knowing that it could be moved at any time. Then Ms. Vazquez heard on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving that crews had arrived at the church. Members of the group raced over and stood in a backyard, watching for hours as workers took the statue out of the church and loaded it onto a truck.
Stanley Rydzewski, 68, reminisced about baptisms and weddings at St. Adalbert, saying that the building was more than a parish, a repository of vital Polish history.
On the day of the statue’s removal, Ms. Vazquez and the other members of her group would not let it leave without a fight.
For weeks, they had waited anxiously, knowing that it could be moved at any time. Then Ms. Vazquez heard on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving that crews had arrived at the church. Members of the group raced over and stood in a backyard, watching for hours as workers took the statue out of the church and loaded it onto a truck.
Stanley Rydzewski, 68, reminisced about baptisms and weddings at St. Adalbert, saying that the building was more than a parish, a repository of vital Polish history.
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| http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/The_Jungle_Upton_Sinclair.pdf |
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