The Commitment of the Discalced Carmelites among Polonia in the United States

Abstract

After the Second World War several Polish Discalced Carmelites and chaplains of the Polish Army came to the United States. They put into practice, so to say, St. Rafał Kalinowski's dream when they established a monastery in 1950 in Hammond, from where they moved after two years to Munster in the diocese of Gary. Here they immediately began their pastoral ministry among the Polish community in Chicago. They built the well-known Sanctuary of the Mother of God of the Scapular. In the sanctuary park they erected a grotto to the Mother of God from Lourdes. Around the altar they placed urns with the ashes of the captives and prisoners murdered in the concentration camps in Poland and Soviet forced-labour camps. Moreover, in later years a monument of Christ the King was erected, a mountain chapel of Christ as the Man of Sorrows and the Our Lady of Ludźmierz, a monument of St. Teresa of the Baby Jesus, a monument of St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Our Lady of Ostra Brama chapel. After Kardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected to Peter's See they decorated the Papal Room with a monument of the Holy Father, organised a photo exhibition with all his apostolic trips abroad, and built St. Rafał Kalinowski Home of Encounters.

John Paul II especially distinguished the Carmelite Sanctuary in Munster. In 2004 he gave it a rosary made of pure gold with a respective document in which we read: „To Our Lady of Ludźmierz, the Gaździna of Podhale worshipped in the Carmelite sanctuary in Munster, the patroness of the Society of Podhalanie in North America I offer this gold rosary as a votive – the filial chain with which Mary binds us with Jesus. (...) All worshippers of the Mother of Christ, pilgrims arriving at the Carmelite Sanctuary in Munster – the American Ludźmierz I give my apostolic blessing from the bottom of my heart”.

There were numerous pastoral and patriotic initiatives offered to Chicago Polonia by the Carmelite Sanctuary in Munster. The list includes care for pilgrims, pastoral care in neighbouring parishes, Polish weekend pastoral care, St. Rafał Kalinowski Polish School was run, Polish Millennium Choir, establishment of the John Paul II Society, and a Polish-speaking group of the Lay Discalced Carmelites.

What is more, in autumn 2003 the Discalced Carmelites from Munster, in order to meet the needs of our fellow Poles living in the suburbs of Chicago in Des Plaines and the vicinity, conducted regular pastoral care in St. Zechariahs' church. In August of the following year they took parochial pastoral care at St. Kamil's church in Chicago. For many years, the monks from Munster conducted regular pastoral care in St. Bronon's parish in Chicago, and later in St. Priscilla's church.

The most important initiative of the Polish Carmelites in Munster, however, was their settlement in the end of the 1980s in Korona in Florida and the establishment of a Polish sanctuary in St. Joseph's church.

The Polish Discalced Carmelites, the spiritual sons of the great Spanish mystics, Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross, and fellow brothers of St. Rafał Kalinowski carried out the charisma of their order. Being aware of the signs of time and place, they do not spare hard work to minister to their fellow Poles spread all over the world, of which the United States of North America is the best example. Thereby the Polish monks fulfil the instructions of the Venerable John Paul II and the Papal Council for the Pastoral Care for Migrants and Travellers.