Polish National Catholic Church - History

History

During the late 19th century many new Polish immigrants to the U.S. became dismayed with the Catholic Church hierarchy. The U.S. Church had no Polish bishops and few Polish priests, and would not allow the Polish language to be taught in parish schools. The mainly ethnic Irish and German bishops helped establish hundreds of parishes for Poles, but priests were usually unable to speak Polish, and the new immigrants had poor or limited English. There were also disputes over who owned church property, particularly in Buffalo, New York and Scranton, Pennsylvania, with the parishioners' demanding greater control. Although the majority of Polish-Americans remained with the Roman Catholic Church, where bilingual Polish-American priests and bishops were eventually ordained, many Polish-Americans in the meantime came to believe that these conditions were a manifestation of "political and social exploitation of the Polish people."

A leader in this struggle was Fr. Franciszek Hodur (1866–1953), a Polish immigrant to the United States and a Catholic priest. Born near Krakow, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1893 and was ordained that year; in 1897, he became pastor of St. Stanislaus Cathedral in Scranton. Continued discontent led to an open rupture with the U.S. Catholic Church in 1897, when Polish immigrants founded an independent Polish body, headquartered in Scranton, with initially some 20,000 members. Fr. Hodur was consecrated as a bishop in 1907 in Utrecht, Netherlands, by three Old Catholic bishops. The PNCC considers him to be the founder and first bishop of the denomination. In 1914 another schism resulted in the formation of the smaller Lithuanian National Catholic Church; it later merged with the PNCC.

From 1907–2003, the PNCC was a member of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht. For much of that period, it was the only member church of the Union based outside Europe (although it was not so when the Philippine Independent Church, also known as the Aglipayan Church, briefly joined the Union of Utrecht).

The Church began missionary work in Poland after the country regained independence following World War I. By the beginning of World War II, the PNCC had founded more than 50 parishes along with a theological seminary in Krakow. During post-war Communist rule of Poland, the Church suffered severe persecution. The Polish Catholic Church is now an autocephalous body in communion with the PNCC.(Mead 1995, p. 222)

Eugene W. Magyar was consecrated on June 29, 1963 as first Bishop of Slovak parishes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He had served previously as dean of Slovak parishes in the PNCC since 1958.

In 2002 Robert M. Nemkovich was elected by the twenty-first General Synod to be the sixth Prime Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church.

In 2010 Anthony Mikovsky was elected by the twenty-third General Synod to be the seventh Prime Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church. Bishop Mikovsky has been bishop of the Central Diocese and pastor of St. Stanislaus Cathedral since 2006. Before becoming bishop, he served as the assistant pastor at St. Stanislaus, the mother church of the denomination, beginning in 1997.