It was noon Sunday on the Near West Side, and a Chicago police car, its blue dome light flashing, was blocking both lanes of traffic on Augusta Boulevard at Oakley Avenue.
In a few minutes, a procession of worshipers would be crossing the intersection and returning to their starting point at St. Helen Roman Catholic Church.
At the moment, the worshipers were a block north, kneeling on the pavement and on the sidewalks around a temporary outdoor altar at the corner of Oakley and Cortez Street.
It was among four such altars that had been erected at locations in the parish for this annual Catholic observance, which is called the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ by those who are up-to-date on their ecclesiastical terminology but whose traditional name is the Feast of Corpus Christi.
The four altars in this ancient ritual represent the four corners of the Earth–north, south, east and west–and a text from a different Gospel is always read at each.
“In the old country, people might go from village to village,” said Ed Sroka, who has been a member of St. Helen’s for 40 years, lives only a block away from the church and is so well-known and liked by so many in the neighborhood that he’s referred to as “the mayor of Augusta Boulevard.”
He certainly has the kind of pride of place you’d expect a mayor to have.
“Look at that,” he said. “Eight hundred people.
Isn’t that something?”
The numbers didn’t really look quite that large, but give Mayor Sroka some leeway on his estimate and put the total at somewhere between, say, 400 and 800.
The turnout undoubtedly was enhanced by a second special occasion of this Sunday, the observance of the church’s 85th anniversary.
St. Helen was founded on June 6, 1913, when Archbishop James Quigley, the chief prelate of the Chicago archdiocese, directed Rev. Peter Pyterek to establish a new church for Catholics of Polish descent.
“Our parish was very big and very strong in the early days and then there was a period where it went down and now it’s on the way up again,” Sroka said. “At the peak, we had maybe 1,000 families. Now we’re back up to 600 families. This is thanks to our wonderful pastor, Father Bruno Chmiel. There he is, next to the bishop.”
Bishop Thad Jakubowski, an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese, and Rev. Chmiel were moving across Augusta.
“Father (Chmiel) says our church is like a port of entry for Polish people who come to this country to live,” Evelyn Ogiela, the church’s business manager, would later say. “What happens is that the mother and father both usually work, and once they get financially stable and their children learn English, they have enough for a down payment on a house and they move to the suburbs.”
She threw up her hands as a sign of frustration.
“That makes it hard for us,” she said. “But St. Helen’s has a very good school –preschool through 8th grade. We want people to stay here in the community.”
At the conclusion of the service, the worshipers–some of whom were former members of the parish and now live in the suburbs–sang the Polish national anthem.
Then 85-year-old Vincinta Bukowski was handed the microphone that fed the portable loudspeaker.
“We will sing `God Bless America,’ ” she announced.
And she began to sing in a surprisingly clear, robust soprano.
“She spent 3 1/2 years in a concentration camp, doing forced labor, during World War II,” said her daughter, Wanda, after her mother had finished. “She came to this country on May 5, 1951, and very soon she was a widow. So she went to work. She worked three jobs at once.”
Doing what?
“Cleaning,” Vincinta Bukowski said.
“She cleaned buildings–at night, in the daytime,” Wanda Bukowski said. “There are four of us children. I have a twin sister, Carol, and two brothers, Ted and George. Our mother put us all through private schools. She loves this country.”
It was 12:30 p.m., and the St. Helen’s people were getting in their cars and preparing to drive north via Chicago’s great Polish corridor that is Milwaukee Avenue to the church’s capstone event, a dinner at the White Eagle banquet hall on Milwaukee Avenue in Niles.
Inside the hall, Evelyn Ogiela paused from checking on last-minute details to heap more praise on her pastor.
“When I feel a breeze, I know that Father (Chmiel) has just passed by,” she said. “He is always on the move. He works 16 and 18 hours a day. This church used to have three or four pastors. Now he’s the only one. He does weddings, funerals, last rites, baptisms, he visits the sick on Saturdays and Sundays.
He conducts all the masses–two on weekdays, one in Polish and one in English; and three on Sundays, two in Polish and one in English.
A breeze passed. It was the pastor, who stopped for a moment.
“I want to establish stability in our parish,” he said. “I want to emphasize education. And I want to mix the old and the new immigrants. There is tension between them. The older ones have been here many years. They think, `Everything is ours. And we have done it this way forever.’ It is an old story for churches.”
The church presented its Humanitarian Award to Sister Stella Louise, the president and CEO of St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital, 2233 W. Division St.
Its Polish Heritage Award went to Edward Moskal, president of the Polish National Alliance.
The featured speaker was former U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, a member of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church on the Northwest Side.
“St. Helen’s is a relatively young church,” he said, before taking his seat at the head table. “When I graduated from school at St. Stanislaus in 1942, our church was celebrating its 75th anniversary.”
He made a dramatic grimace. “Come to think of it, St. Helen’s is only 10 years older than I am.”
