By
the end of the 19th century, the East side of
Buffalo was densely populated with Poles. Seeing the tremendous strain
on the
existing parishes and the growth of the Independent Polish Catholic
Church, Bishop
Quigley contacted
the Franciscan Fathers in Syracuse,
a German province, for assistance. The Rev. Jacek Fudzinski
came to
Buffalo in the spring of 1898 and met with the Bishop about founding
still
another Roman Catholic parish.
Fr. Fudzinski, with the Bishop's advice, took out loans and purchased
29 lots
on Clark Street and Kent Streets. There were ten cottages on this
property, and
in one of these he established his little monastery. He had a larger
frame
building, where the present Rectory stands, serve as a parish church.
Its
seating capacity did not exceed 300 people.
In August 1898 work began on a three-story brick school building
facing Clark
Street. The first floor housed the parish church which could seat over
a thousand
people; the parish school was located on the second floor, while the
third was
used for social gatherings and meetings of parish societies. Classes
in the
school were taught by the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. Within the
first
year of existence, the new church boasted 650 families with a sizable
youth
element - and there was a steady stream of immigrants from Poland.
With such
numbers, a church building large enough to accommodate these growing
numbers
was a necessity.
In 1907 construction of the present sandstone church was begun and
dedicated by
Bishop Charles Colton and the Rev Bishop Pawel Rhode, the first Polish
bishop
in America, on June 13, 1909. Completed at a cost of $100,000, the 90
by 175
foot building seats 1,650 people. The copper domes of the towers are
surmounted
by crosses into which were stuffed hundreds of letters written by the
school
children of the parish during the building's construction
To instruct the parish children, Fr Fudzinski brought a newly founded
religious
order of women to the parish, the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph,
who taught
until the school was closed in the 1980s.
Renovation and
Beautification 1923-1926
Between 1923 and 1926, during the
administration of
the second pastor of the church, Fr. Michael Cieslik, a number of
changes took
place in the church:
- The interior of the church was painted for the first time and
decorated with works of sacred art.
- The
artist adorned the sanctuary with paintings of six angels on
canvas. They symbolize the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation,
Penance, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Anointing of the Sick, and
serve as a background for the main altar where the Most Blessed
Sacrament is preserved.
- The
interior of the church features some of the finest ecclesiastical
art in the city. Installed during the 1920s, the crowning feature
is a reproduction of Raphael's Disputa del santissimo in
the semidome of the apse above the main altar
- The
paintings above the two side altars represent Franciscan themes.
The one above the St. Anthony's altar represents B. V. Mary, Queen
of the Franciscan Order, together with illustrious saints of the
three Orders founded by St. Francis of Assisi. The other, above
the Holy Family altar, represents St. Joseph in company of
Franciscan saints and martyrs.
- The
upper walls of the church above the center aisle are graced with six
large Madonnas. They are reproductions from famous Marian shrines in
Poland.
- Plain glass windows were replaced with stained glass.
One of these is the exquisite rose-window which features the
Blessed Virgin Mary being taken into heaven. All of these
stained-glass windows, both in the church and in the vestibule, were
imported from Munich, Germany.
- The
fourteen Stations of the Cross were encased in large ornamental
frames.
Renovation and Beautification for the
Golden
Jubilee in 1948
The fiftieth anniversary fell during Fr. Eustace
Bartoszewicz's
pastorship.
- The
sanctuary was considerably enlarged, renovated and refreshed. A new
marble pulpit and marble communion railings with marble steps and
floor reaching to the side altars were installed. This gave a new
look to the entire sanctuary.
- The
lower portion of the walls in the church and in the vestibule were
covered with pink marble imported from Italy.
- The
paintings in the sanctuary and in the church were artistically
redone by M. M. Rzeznik, the artist-painter. Ten smaller pictures of
Saints over the arches, and the mural above the center entrance to
the interior of the church, were the artist's original additions to
the art treasures of the church.
- Two
new bells were installed in one of the towers where up to that time
only one bell called parishioners for Mass and other church
services.
- Six
luminous electric clocks were installed in the twin towers.
- Originally
there were only three aisles in the church: the center and the two
side aisles. Sometime after the celebration of the Golden Jubilee
the side pews, which ran up to the walls, were shortened so that two
new aisles were provided for the convenience and safety of the
congregation.
Further Changes
- A
great organ in the church in 1926. It was refurbished in 1968.
- In
1962 the exterior of the church was sandblasted for the first time.
The lower roofs of the church were repaired and retarred.
By the early twentieth Century, this
church,
like parish churches in all of the immigrant neighborhoods of Buffalo,
had
become the actual as well as the symbolic focal point of community
life. It was
also the center of a whole range of secular activities: Needlework
clubs;
dramatic societies; bowling, baseball, and basketball teams; lodges;
and mutual
benefit associations all used the church as a meeting place. When it
came to
the parish church, there was little separation between the sacred and
the
secular.
During this period of completion of the building's interior, the
parish's rate
of growth declined, a direct result of the construction of the New
York Central
Terminal, several blocks away. To clear ample space for it, almost 300
homes
were demolished. In 1929 the parish population decreased from 2,000
families to
1,750.
According to the WNY Catholic (Feb.
2005) the
Corpus Christi church came under the administration of the Pauline
Fathers (2
priests and 2 brothers), on Jan. 1, 2004, through the efforts of Bp.
Mansell,
who was familiar with the order as the Paulines had taken over a New
York City
inner city church earlier. Father Anselm Chalupka, OSPPE, is the
pastor.
