Rodowicz, John

Photographs courtesy of the Milwaukee Diocese.
Rodowicz, Rev. John
(1833 - 1896)
Clergyman. Came to U.S. after narrowly escaping Russian exile to Siberia. Pastor of St. Stanislaus parish, Milwaukee, Wis., 1870-1875. At the first National Convention of Polish Roman Catholic Union in 1874 elected director of said organization. From 1886 to 1896 pastor of St. Stanislaus parish. Baltimore, Md., where he built the present church. Died in 1896 in Baltimore, Md.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943
P0L-AM HISTORY
Where Are Thou Father Rodowicz?
by Edward Pinkowski (Zgoda, February 1, 2007, p. 16)
Looking back to the Polish churches in the United States, the St. Stanislaus Catholic churches in Milwaukee and Baltimore have opened more eyes because of their architectural features than all the paintings in the Louvre. Yet the priest who built them is largely ignored. John Rodowicz, or whatever it was in Lithuanian, was born July 12, 1833, along the Baltic coast in western Lithuania, and was ordained March 28, 1859, in the Diocese of Samogitia by Bishop Motiejus Valancius, as is recorded in the archives of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. The file is bare between the lines. It stands to reason because the Samogitia Theological Seminary was then the only institution of higher education in Lithuania, that young Rodowicz studied for the priesthood close to home, and, as was typical, stayed in the Diocese of Samogitia after he was ordained. Bishop Valancius who was appointed in 1850 by Pope Pius IX and described by Pope John Paul II as "the provident shepherd of the Lord's flock," kept a steady hand on every Catholic priest in the diocese. Hundreds of lowlanders, as inhabitants of the diocese were known, answered his call for service to God. Like him, practically each priest learned Polish in his youth in one way or another. Polish was the language of instruction in the parish schools. He required every parish to have a school. Naturally the pastor was also the teacher. The bishop talked to his priests in Polish and advised them to read Polish books. The struggle for Lithuanian independence had not yet begun.
The year before Rodowicz was ordained, the bishop ordered every parish to organize a temperance society in order to fight drunkenness in the diocese. It didn't take Father Rodowicz long to have every man in his parish take an oath to remain sober. The use of alcohol dropped in the district from 1,033,534 barrels in 1858 to 126,194 in 1860. Liquor taxes dropped so much that the Russian government, which ruled Lithuania and Poland since 1795. tried to expel Bishop Valancius. It failed.
Next, in 1863, when some professors and seminarians at Varniai took part in an anti-Russian uprising, the Tsar's troops closed the Catholic seminary. In the campaign to close the churches, 107 of the 654 priests in the diocese were arrested and sent to Siberia. Rodowicz and other priests fled to Munich, Paris, or wherever they could hide. On top of that, the uprising drove the people in Russian occupied zones to the United States to build a new and better life for themselves and their children. By 1870 the Polish population of Milwaukee had multiplied and Bishop Henni expected it to grow by leaps and bounds. He made it as easy as possible for priests and nuns to enter his kingdom.

Almost from the beginning, the teaching Sisters of Notre Dame moved from Baltimore to staff the parochial schools of Milwaukee. Father Rodowicz, who came from Munich, the capital of Bavaria, now part of Germany. In 1870 after receiving an invitation from the bishop of Milwaukee, was the third pastor of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Milwaukee. His living quarters were in the two-story St. Stanislaus School. The first Polish parish school in the United States staffed by teaching nuns, and his office became the launching pad for building projects. His architect, Leonard A. Schmidtner, alias Kowalski. who came to Milwaukee in 1849 at the age of 21 and started of as a mason, designed a church with twin steeples, in baroque style and Rodowicz found a hill as you enter Milwaukee from the south to attract the most eyes for his church. It reminds one of a cathedral in Lithuania where he was ordained. The towers -- not to mention bells -- have a clock on each side, eight in all, and the exterior walls have beautifully carved figures in marble of the apostles. The same sculptor, Charles Lohr, one of the best in Milwaukee, also did the marble pulpit and the altar in the church. The work was completed in 1873.
Rodowicz's legacy will never rank with Victor L. Berger. who dominated Milwaukee's political life for a long time; Joseph Schlitz and Frederick Pabst, who virtually turned the city into beer drinkers; or the baseball players who entertained them. Nevertheless Father Rodowicz contributed to the beauty of their city and the mother of Polish churches in Milwaukee is still, in the second century, as beautiful as ever in the south end of the city. The mastermind of all this beautiful architecture lasted only a short time in Milwaukee. In 1875, Henni, who just became an Archbishop, closed the church and removed Rodowicz after the church organist and a prominent family fought over the timepieces in the church steeples. In eleven years at St. Hedwig's in the north end of the city, Rodowicz found time to teach Polish at the St. Francis Seminary, foster Polish literature, and was an officer in the Polish Roman Catholic Union.
In 1880 Rodowicz tried to help a countryman, the Rev. Ladislaus Debski, who stayed with him briefly in Milwaukee, to find a church to take care of, but Archbishop Henni wanted no part of Debski. The two priests lived in St. Hedwig's rectory. On October 25, five months after a census taker found them together, Debski, whom Bishop Valancius had ordained in Lithuania in 1860, was appointed pastor of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in the mountainous village of Wilno (Hagerty), Upper Canada, where he ministered to 500 Polish families until the bishop of the Ontario diocese learned that Debski had married a Swiss woman, with whom he had children, and left them destitute in a small town near Zurich. Switzerland. The bishop discharged him on September 3, 1893.
For the second time in Milwaukee, on September 20, 1885, Archbishop Henni closed St. Hedwig's church, where Rodowicz was the pastor, when angry parishioners would not allow the parish organist into the church to play for Sunday services. After the riot, in the days to come, the mob stormed into the rectory, breaking the front door to pieces, and destroyed all the furniture. Whereupon Rodowicz resigned. The church and the school were closed until December when the parishioners apologized to the archbishop for their behavior.
When the Rev. Peter Koncz died February 8, 1886, Rodowicz got another opportunity to add weight to his legacy by building the second edifice of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church in Baltimore. He succeeded Koncz as pastor and when the first edifice, opened for religious worship in 1880 on South Ann Street in the southeast section of Baltimore, known as Fells Point, was in danger of collapse into a water hole, he called upon Charles F. Cassell, an architect in Baltimore since 1868, with a degree in engineering from the University of Virginia and plenty of experience in foundations, to advise him. The only solution was to build a new church on a solid foundation. Cassell, or Casselli, as it was known in Genoa, Italy, before the family emigrated to Norfolk, Virginia, in the 1820s, selected the Romanesque style of architecture for St. Stanislaus Church. It was one that could be admired from all sides, and Father Rodowicz was immensely proud of it. He died May 9, 1896, in St. Joseph's Hospital. Baltimore, and his body was laid to rest in the parish cemetery.
Postscript. James Cardinal Gibbons, who dedicated it on November 15, 1891, turned over the administration of the church to Franciscan Friars in 1905. The archbishop who sits on the throne today closed the church for religious services on May 6, 2000. It's still in the air at this writing whether the city of Baltimore will preserve the jewel that Rodowicz left it.