St. Casimir Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church

St. Casimir Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church was a church in Sioux City, Iowa. It was built by the Lithuanian immigrant community of Sioux City in 1915, and served as a neighborhood parish until 1998. Although it was founded as an ethnic parish, members have included Roman Catholics of diverse backgrounds, including Irish, Polish, Italian, and Mexican. The location near the stockyards and meat packing industrial area of the city attracted many of its working-class neighbors, including many new converts who came to Catholicism through St. Casimir Church. However, during the 1990s, the Diocese of Sioux City forbade St. Casimir parish from enrolling any new members, in spite of a lively and financially solvent congregation. Then, in 1998 the diocese dissolved the parish, appropriating all holdings and instructing parishioners to join other active parishes. The building, which was deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, was emptied of the fixtures, artwork, and stained glass and left vacant. As of May, 2007, the diocese made public a plan to raze the structure, based on safety concerns. Private interests arranged for the unique dome to be salvaged. The demolition was completed on 17 July 2007.

The building was designed by the Prairie School architect William L. Steele, and built by Babue and Co. It incorporated a simplified neo-gothic exterior design, along with a distinctive “bell-cast” dome (cupola) atop the steeple. The interior was extensively decorated by the Lithuanian artist Adolfas Valeška in the early 1950s, including woodwork, a pulpit, stained glass, and several large paintings, among them Our Lady of Fatima, the Good Shepherd, and the Assumption of Mary. Our Lady of Fatima and the The Good Shepherd now reside in St. Joseph Center at the Trinity Heights Marian shrine in Sioux City, along with the European bisque statue of the patron, Saint Casimir, all of which were purchased back from an antiques dealer after having been salvaged from the sanctuary. Other artifacts were hand-picked by the diocese for placement in the newly renovated Cathedral of the Epiphany and Mater Dei grade school.


Read more about St. Casimir Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church:  Former Pastors

Famous quotes containing the words catholic church, roman, catholic and/or church:

    The Catholic Church has never really come to terms with women. What I object to is being treated either as Madonnas or Mary Magdalenes.
    Shirley Williams (b. 1930)

    The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.
    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

    He felt that it would be dull times in Dublin, when they should have no usurping government to abuse, no Saxon Parliament to upbraid, no English laws to ridicule, and no Established Church to curse.
    Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)