Rev. Franciszek Kasaczun: a Polish Priest's Legacy

Rev. Franciszek Kasaczun: a Polish Priest's Legacy
April 1, 2011 (Revised April 26, 2014)

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Like many Polish immigrants' daughters growing up as 1920s American flappers, my grandmother was perhaps glad to lose the funny-sounding native name by marrying an Irish guy. However she never lost the strong Polish identity and pride that her forebears had developed under the rule and ridicule of foreigners. For years she bragged that her grandson had declared that The Star Spangled Banner was written by "Francis Scottski."

Transplanted in her later years from Pennsylvania to Bethesda Maryland, she helped my parents raise me in this Washington, DC, suburb where Catholicism is often compromised by affluence and by shame in the face of diverse worldviews and lifestyles.

In a place where Catholics of my parents’ generation and mine ridiculed the faith, questioned it--usually because they knew nothing about it--my grandmother never failed to root for her home-team, the Catholic church. She would bet on racehorses with Catholic sounding names, i.e. "Rosaryville." They even paid off once in a while.

“Nana” died in 1974. It’s a real shame that we could not see the joy she would have exploded with when, four years after her departure, a man from her "faraway land," where he had witnessed the worst of Man's inhumanity, brought extraordinary wisdom and holiness to the church and the world as Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul The Great.

The real test of the faith "Nana" and my parents handed came when I went to Catholic schools. My studies occurred during the height of the sorry era when nearly 100% of those who attended Catholic institutions—especially expensive, private ones—left the church, usually never to return. This was one of the great scandals perpetrated by liberal Catholics.

I could easily have been among those permanently lost or in decades of wasteful exile. For a few years in my 20s, I disbelieved in Catholicism. However I continued to go to Mass, out of habit and because not going was unthinkable in the Conway household. Mere habit--going through the motions when faith is absent--should never be discounted. It can be salvific. It can keep individuals and indeed, whole societies from going mad and becoming thoroughly evil.

Just as the kings and poets kept Poland Catholic, so my Polish grandmother kept me Catholic even in the years when I didn’t feel like being one. Return to Page 1.

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Boleslawa Tombak

Above: In 2010, a setting summer sun caresses the lovingly-maintained, solid-brick Holy Family Church in Sugar Notch, PA. The traditionally Polish parish has come through the turn-of-the-century consolidation and closure. As the various ethnic groups of Catholics melted into the pot and as the number of Mass attendees and priests declined, many church-communities became redundant and had to be closed.

In parts of Northeastern PA, the shuttering of churches where families have received sacraments for generations has generated much acrimony.

However under the leadership of a true John Paul II pastor, Viet Nam native, Rev. Vincent Dang, Holy Family merged peacefully with Sugar Notch's "Irish church," St. Charles Borromeo, that of my Conway relatives and ancestors. A member of the Conway Family serves as Holy Family's music director. Fr. Kasaczun's parish is now ready to play its role in the great renewal of the millenium.

Below: a stained-glass window in the church memorializes Fr. Kasaczun, who served as pastor from 1911 to 1942. In the window's left panel is St. Casimir Iagiellon, patron of Poland, Lithuania and of youth. Born in the storied Wawel Palace in Krakow, Prince Casimir was a student of historian/diplomat Fr. Jan Dlugosz and a contemporary of Nicholas Kopernik. His extreme mortification, fasting and praying on his knees in front of churches all night even in foul weather shortened his life to 24 years. In the right panel is St. Cecilia, the patroness of church music who preached and prayed while suffering a hard Third-Century Roman martyrdom.

Fr. Francis Kasaczun Holy Family Sugar Notch PA