SLOMINSKI, REV. CASIMIR F. (March 1864 -- Sept. 7, 1928)Priest and playwright. Much has been written about the Polish priests in the days of the horse and buggy. Not enough, however, to distinguish the first one to graduate from the Polish seminary of Rev. Joseph Dabrowski.
This is the first time that anyone has considered Father Casimir F. Slominski for the mysterious honor. Father Waclaw Kruszka, author of A History of the Poles in America to 1908, mentioned the names of five students on December 15, 1887, when the seminary opened its doors. Who was the sixth one? Was he Casimir F. Slominski, who came from Poznan, in the German partition of Poland, with his parents in the 1860s, and who, in the midst of his education for the priesthood, after Chicago and Berlin (Canada), found himself in Detroit?
During the First World War the city of Berlin in Canada, where he attended St. Jerome's Seminary, changed its name to Kitchener after Britain's Minister of War who was killed in action. At the same time, dozens of "German sounding" towns had their names changed.
According to the founder of the Polish seminary, Jan Miller, one of his first students, was sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to complete his studies for the priesthood. Nowhere is he listed in the alumni of the Polish seminary. Did Slominski receive the same treatment? He achieved his goal of priesthood in 1890 and the Archbishop of Chicago, who ordained him, sent him to St. Adalbert's, the third oldest Polish parish in Chicago, to assist the pastor, Rev. John Radziejewski, who founded the parish in 1882.
The letter of Rev. Simon Kobrzynski, C. R., dated March 3, 1891, to the Superior of the Resurrectionist Order in Rome, would be a valuable peg to fill a hole in the records of the Polish seminary. He recalled that Slominski, with whom he was acquainted in Rome and Chicago, was "an alumnus of the famous seminary of Father Dabrowski in Detroit." It means no other student was ordained before Rev. Casimir Slominski.
Wherever Rev. Caslmir F. Slominski served, it meant that the Archbishop of Chicago did not have to worry about staffing it with a member of a Polish religious order. Father Slominski was a diocesan priest. His parents, Wladyslaw and Valeria Slominski, who opened a store in 1872 to make badges and banners for public ceremonies and manufacture picture frames, were proud of him. The Polish Museum in Chicago still has banners designed and sewn by Mrs. Slominski or her daughters. Casimir Slominski was the oldest of five children. The others were all girls.
Hardly a year passed by without the pastor and the curate of St. Adalbert's in the Pilsen section of Chicago, Revs. John Radziejewski and Slominski, respectively, going out to organize a Polish parish in a section that was only a prairie a short time before. The first one that Father Slominski created by himself was at Hawthorne, where most of the lime and stone quarry workers were Polish immigrants. In the beginning they walked five and one half miles to St. Adalbert's Church and then three and one-half miles to St. Casimir's Church, to worship and hear sermons in their native tongue. When the group grew to 86 families, Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan appointed Father Slominski as their pastor on May 30, 1895.
He celebrated the first Mass in a nondescript hall in Cicero, which he transformed into a church and school, and slept in makeshift quarters behind the altar. Then he built a frame church and named it St. Mary of Czestochowa after the holy shrine in southern Poland. Shortly after, he built a one-room school house. Owing to poor health, he was succeeded in July of 1899 by the Rev. Leo Wyrzykowski. The third pastor, Rev. Bronislaus Czajkowski, built a brick church in 1905 at a cost of $63,000, compared to the frame church that Father Slominski built for $5,000, and the parish, still in charge of the same pasror as in 1905, built a new edifice in 1918 at a cost of $132,000. In 1945 the parish included 1600 families.
Nobody missed him more than the young people of St. Adalbert's parish, whose singing society and dramatic club he had energized in the early 90s, and they were happy when he was appointed on March 3, 1903, to organize St. Ann's parish in a new neighborhood around 19th and Ashland Avenue, west of St. Adalbert's Church. They helped him to raise money and select a site for the new enterprise. Nobody was suprised that a $80,000, four-story house of worship and a grammar school was dedicated by Archbishop James E. Quigley on November 8, 1903. Still more amazing, It broke his heart when Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth enrolled 1,353 children in the school in 1920 and had no more room for 600 other children who had to go to nearby public schools.
After serving as pastor of St. Ann's parish to 1921, he had to spend the last seven years of his life in a hospital. He died September 7, 1928, at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital.
Author: Edward Pinkowski (2011) -- [email protected]
Read earlier (2009) article about Rev. Casimir F. Slominski