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\nNational impact<\/p>\nDiscontented with the Irish and German hierarchy regionally and a lack of Polish priests and bishops in the Catholic Church, the group, led by the Rev. Franciszek \u201cFrancis\u201d Hodur, chartered its own vision of organization and faith.<\/p>\n
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The committee that formed St. Stanislaus Church in Scranton asked the the Rev. Franciszek \u201cFrancis\u201d Hodur to serve as pastor in 1897.<\/p>\n
The uniquely American church was consecrated on March 21,1897, when Hodur celebrated the faith\u2019s first Mass in the yet-to-be-finished church at 535 E. Locust St. in Scranton. Hodur would later be elected bishop at the church\u2019s first synod that had 147 representatives from five states.<\/p>\n
In addition to lack of Polish clergy, disputes with Rome centered on authority, language and property in predominantly Polish parishes. The Central Diocese, which includes NEPA, has 32 parishes including the faith\u2019s headquarters at the St. Stanislaus Bishop & Martyr Cathedral in Scranton.<\/p>\n
At the time, the church\u2019s Latin books were translated into Polish, and Polish became the official church language. Other changes further distanced the church from Roman tradition including priests and bishops could marry, bishops would be nominated by delegates at a synod and approved by a prime bishop and Supreme Council, and an elected prime bishop, not the pope, would oversee church leaders.<\/p>\n
Living legacy<\/p>\n
The Roman Catholic church eventually named Polish priests and bishops, even a Polish pope in 1978, Karol Wojty\u0142a, who took the name Pope John Paul II and was beatified a saint several years after his death in 2005. Meetings with that pontiff and PNCC officials eased much of any remaining animosity.<\/p>\n
Old Forge native Bishop Anthony M. Rysz, who died in 2015 and served as the 4th Ordinary of the Central Diocese, credited John Paul II with fostering those talks.<\/p>\n
That pope understood \u201cthe yearnings of Polish immigrants to remain faithful to the church, and at the same time, not deny the tie to their Polish past,\u201d he said. \u201cHe would have understood Bishop Hodur\u2019s concerns. I don\u2019t think any other pope would.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a company with a direct link to Poland bought the former Technicolor plant in Olyphant, one of the many reasons the firm chose the location was the region\u2019s Polish heritage and relationship to the Polish National Catholic Church. Canpack Group, headquartered in Krak\u00f3w, Poland, and a subsidiary of the food manufacturing and packaging company Giorgi Global Holdings, built a massive plant here to make aluminum beverage cans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just really felt this (area) was ideal,\u201d said former state Sen. John Blake, when the announcement was made. \u201cIt met all their check boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sidelight<\/p>\n
After the funeral service of Hodur\u2019s successor, Presiding Bishop Leon Grochowski in 1969, a church spokesperson announced: \u201cScranton will continue to be the headquarters for the church for a long time to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scranton proud, Hodur engineered the only major independent Catholic denomination born in the United States, proving that in NEPA, the fight for self-determination extended from the coal mines straight to the church pews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polish identity stemming from strong ties to the motherland and a lack of ethnic representation in the clergy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[91500,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-210409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-america250-nepa","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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