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 roman, catholic and/or church:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Go, you are dismissed.
[Ite missa est.]”
—Missal, The. The Ordinary of the Mass.
Missal is book of prayers and rites used to celebrate the Roman Catholic mass during the year.
“The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavern is where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)