Religion
Polish Downtown is perhaps most noted for its opulent "Polish Cathedrals", magnificently ornate structures that dazzle many of those driving through the area along the Kennedy Expressway. The buildings express the religious zeal and faith of the large immigrant Polish congregations. The combined membership of the exclusively Polish Roman Catholic parishes of Polish Downtown together had over 100,000 parishioners in 1918, all located within a one-mile radius.
Although most of these are Roman Catholic churches, a schism that escalated into violence by parishioners of St. Hedwig's Church led to the founding of an independent Polish Catholic parish. This parish eventually joined the Polish National Catholic Church. Raised to the status of a cathedral, the parish erected a new building designed by famed architect J.G Steinbach in 1930. The Cathedral of All Saints still stands today, now owned and occupied by the Presbyterian Church in America, which bought the building in 1993.
Read more about this topic: Polish Downtown (Chicago)
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
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—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“No, no; Religion is a Spring
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—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)