Once again, I forgot to actually write up my visit to a church on the day it happened.
St Hedwig is the sister church of St John Berchmans in the two-church St Carlo Acutis parish that I visited on Sunday. But where St John Berchmans is a restrained church (designed by a protestant architect I’ve since learned), St Hedwig, founded as a Polish church is built in the “Polish Cathedral” style which employed high levels of baroque decoration.
I arrived at the church about five minutes before the Mass was scheduled to begin and was somewhat dismayed to see that there was nobody there. Had I gotten the time wrong? I’d done that before. But a check on the church website indicated that I was at the right church at the right time.
At about 8.02 a man asked me if I was there for Mass and when I said yes, he directed me to a small chapel off the sanctuary where the daily Mass was actually taking place.
While reading the history of the parish, I was surprised to learn that it was the site of a minor uprising at the end of the nineteenth century where a charismatic priest who had hoped to become pastor inspired riots that led to the parish being closed for three years and his starting a new parish which ultimately led to his excommunication (he then founded the Polish Old Catholic Church and his church is now the Chicago headquarters of the Polish National Church).
One last picture of a grotto near the church rectory:
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