![[Rev. Koncz Picture
- to be placed later]](Koncz_01.JPG)
Koncz, Rev. Peter
(ca. 1837 -- Nov. 2, 1884)
Photograph courtesy of Thomas L. Hollowak
Priest. As much as is known, Peter Koncz learned to speak Lithuanian and Polish in Lithuania, where he was born, and decided early in life to study for the priesthood. During the Russian partition of his homeland he was arrested for his activities. After eight months in prison, he escaped and fled to Rome to continue his education. He was the first Polish priest ordained at St. Francis Seminary in Wisconsin on October 18 (?), 1871.
Without proof, a Lithuanian priest, Rev. William Wolkovich Valkavicius, wrote in Lithuanian Religious Life in America that Lithuanians in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, immediately secured the services of the newly ordained priest, and when Father Koncz came to Shamokin, he urged them to start their own parish. For this, he was chased out of the coal fields by fervent members, predominately Irish, of St. Edward’s Catholic Church, which changed its name in 1995 to Mother Cabrini. Had it come to pass, Shamokin would have been the site of the first Lithuanian church in the United States.
Really, putting Father Koncz aside for the moment, the full story, as I know it, should be told. The first Lithuanians in Shamokin arrived in 1869 when a railroad agent hired them in New York to lay tracks in the hard coal fields of Pennsylvania. When the last rails were laid to Excelsior, a mine patch in the backwoods of Shamokin, the Lithuanians went to work in the coal mines. By 1871 the Lithuanians and Poles got together and formed a religious society to shape their lives.
The first priest to meet their demands for religious services in Polish was Rev. Emil Goch, who came from Rome in 1871, and started the St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr parish in Shamokin. The following year the second Polish parish, though it included Lithuanians, was formed in Shenandoah.
As Rev. Francis Szulak, S. J., one of the organizers of the first Polish church in Chicago, told the story, Bishop Shanahan sent a telegram to Chicago and dispatched him to deal with the first Polish priest in the coal fields. When he arrived in Shamokin, Father Szulak found Father Goch, still in his thirties, so far addicted to whiskey that he was unable to help him.
After Father Goch was suspended, the Jesuit missionary urged Bishop Shanahan to name the Reverend Jozef Juszkiewicz, with whom he worked in Chicago amd other places, the second pastor of the Polish parish in Shamokin. As Father Goch left a lot of work to do, Father Juszkiewicz filed the papers for the incorporation of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish at the courthouse in Sunbury, seat of Northumberland County, and hired a Philadelphia architect, the same one who drew up the plans of St. Edward’s church, to design the first Polish church in Pennsylvania. Father Florian Klonowski, who came from Poland in 1875, succeeded Father Juszkiewicz on July 13, 1876.
To return to the priest of interest, in May 1872 the bishop of Milwaukee assigned Father Koncz, then pastor of St. Hedwig’s parish in Milwaukee, to take care of two parishes in Wisconsin -- St. Casimir’s in Northheim and Immaculate Conception in Manitowoc -- and to alternate every Sunday. The bishop took Manitowoc, seven miles from Northheim, off his hands on April 4, 1873, and Koncz continued at Northheim until August 20, 1873.
The accounts of Father Koncz in Revs. Bolek’s Who’s Who in Polish America and Kruszka’s History of Poles in America vary. According to Who’s Who in Polish America, Father Koncz was appointed pastor of a Bohemian church in Baltimore, Maryland, St. Wenceslaus, on November 25, 1873. Kruszka, on the other hand, reported that he was pastor of St. Mary’s Polish Church at Otis, Indiana, until 1875. Who was right? As is known, the saintly Father Szulak, standing in for a bishop, dedicated St. Mary’s church in Otis, Indiana, on June 22, 1873, and the bishop immediately afterwards secured the services of Father Koncz and in 1876 sent another Polish priest to succeed him. In the same years, while he was stationed on the shores of Lake Michigan, Father Koncz visited other Polish settlements, still not in large numbers, and took spiritual care of them.
In the 1870s, the leaders of the Polish Catholics in the eastern section of Baltimore, known as Fell’s Point, still without their own church, appealed to their archbishops -- first James Bayley and after his death on October 3, 1877, James Gibbons -- to secure the services of a priest fluent in their language to minister to the growing Polish community. However, it was the Bohemian church in Baltimore, to which a number of Polish stevedores, carters and draymen belonged, that received the first services of Father Koncz. Exactly when he arrived in city is a mystery. Certainly it was between 1875, when he left Indiana, and March 8, 1879, when he notified Archbishop Gibbons in writing that he wanted to give up the pastorate of St. Wenceslaus parish. One of the reasons was that the time he devoted to the parish school was not worth it. Naturally it would take years to know whether the school children learned much from him.
The Bohemians, formally in their own church on May 26, 1872, always had trouble with their priests. The Poles who attended the church were unhappy with the first pastor. Another one took unto himself a wife and was evicted. For a year and a half the house of worship and school of the Bohemians stood like a haunted house in the same neighborhood as Johns Hopkins Hospital. Neither the archbishop nor the church trustees could find a Bohemian priest to fill the vacancy. It stands to reason, therefore, that Father Koncz might have been on trial, or mistaken as a teacher, in Baltimore for years until his presence was noted.
After leaving the Bohemians, he conducted services in the Polish language in a house he rented at 223 South Bond Street in the eastern section of the city. The people who attended the Polish services formed the Society of St. Stanislaus Kostka to raise funds for the erection of a Polish church. When the priest and the leaders of the society didn’t see eye to eye, their campaign to raise money was stopped. With the support of his side of the congregation, Father Koncz took it upon himself to raise the money, $18,000 in all, to build the first Polish church in Maryland. The cornerstone was laid on South Ann Street, near Canton Avenue, on April 5, 1880, and the first Mass was said by Father Koncz on May 1, 1881.
The fruits of his labors were felt far and wide. Ironically, Father Goch, with whom he shared the blessings of Rome, traveled from a boarding house in New York City to deliver the main speech in Polish on April 5, 1880, during the groundbreaking ceremonies. Odd as it seems, the two were pastors of St. Casimir’s parish in Northheim, Wisconsin; Koncz, May 1872-August 20, 1873; and Goch, Dec. 22, 1880-June 20, 1881. No parishioners in Baltimore, where his sermons could lift the sun out of the sky, spoke better in Polish than the first pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish. One of the Polish leaders in Baltimore complained that Father Koncz wasn’t fluent in Polish and asked Archbishop Gibbons (later the first cardinal in the United States) to replace him.
"Who cares?" the archbishop replied. "Every Sunday the Polish church is packed. That’s what important!"
With his impressive display of determination, executive ability, and religious fervor, the good-looking pastor of St. Stanislaus gained the confidence of Archbishop Gibbons. By charging an admission to attend Mass, he set an example that other parishes followed, much to their regret, because it was one of the reasons that independent churches sprouted up in Polish colonies. Father Koncz lost outstanding members for a little more than a penny a Mass; he charged each member five cents a month.
After an illness of eight weeks, though in failing health for two years, Father Koncz died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Baltimore. He received a first class funeral. The panegyrist of his life was Archbishop Gibbons, and the priests sang dirges. Before and after them more than 150 school children, who learned to speak Polish from Father Koncz, also sang. Needless to say, in death or in life, whether Father Koncz was in the pulpit or on a catafalque, every pew in the church was occupied.
The body of the first Polish priest in Baltimore was laid to rest in St. Alphonsus Cemetery, popularly known as Home Sweet Home and less known as St. Michael’s Burying Ground and the Redemptorist Cemetery, and in 1903, fourteen years before the cemetery was closed, Father Koncz’s remains were transferred to St. Stanislaus Cemetery.
Never before did so many people, accompanied by a guard of honor, follow the cortege to the cemetery as in 1884 and 1903. The second procession was longer than the first one. Long lines of carriages carried the archbishop, priests, and other mourners to the cemeteries. Streetcars were added in 1903. As time passed, the procession in the wake of a dead priest grew longer and longer.
Author: Edward Pinkowski (2009)
Koncz, Rev. Peter
Clergyman. Ordained Oct. 18, 1871 at St. Francis Seminary, St. Francis, Wis.; the first Polish priest ordained at St. Francis Seminary, St. Francis, Wis. Pastor at St. Hedwig's, Milwaukee, Wis., 1871-1872. From 1872 to 1873 pastor at Immaculate Conception of B. V. Mary parish, Manitowoc, Wis., serving also from 1872 to May 3, 1873, as pastor of St. Casimir's parish, Northeim, Wis. On Nov. 25, 1873 appointed pastor of St. Venceslaus parish, Baltimore, Md. Organized St. Stanislaus parish, Baltimore, Md. and its pastor, 1879-86. Died Feb. 8, 1886 in Baltimore, Md.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943