Sweetest Perfection

Sweetest Heart of Mary is one of the largest Catholic churches in Detroit, a soaring Gothic Revival visible from miles away. It was built over the last few decades of the nineteenth century by Polish immigrants, and it could be said that the history of Sweetest Heart is a history in miniature of Polish Catholicism in Michigan.

The first wave of Polish immigrants to the United States came in the latter half of the nineteenth century. They were a highly patriotic people, many of them ex-revolutionaries, driven out of Poland by the conflicting political pressures put upon them by Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian control of their homeland. Many of them moved to Detroit, drawn by the promise of manufacturing jobs and the fact that the city was already strongly Catholic from previous waves of European immigration.

But when the Poles arrived, they had no church of their own. Instead they were relegated to the closest Catholic church near their ethnic enclave: Saint Joseph’s, a German parish. Tensions between the two groups tightened almost immediately, and the Poles asked the bishop of Detroit, Caspar
Borgess—a German—for permission to build their own parish. He granted it, and soon work began on Saint Albertus, the first Polish Catholic church in the city. The work moved quickly, and, aside from the minor disputes that accompany any building project, peace reigned.

All that changed in 1882 with the arrival of Father Dominic Hippolytus Kolasiński, who had been sent from Krakow to become the fifth pastor of Saint Albertus. On paper he could not have looked better. Kolasiński had with him a sheaf of letters attesting to his competence and character, signed by his bishop and chancery officials back in Krakow. (Only later would it come to light that while the letters were genuine, the expressions they contained were not: the bishop had sent Kolasiński away to be free from his antics.) Kolasiński was well received, in large part because his services were needed. The Polish community in the city kept growing, and soon another, larger parish was needed to accommodate the new arrivals.

With the blessing of Borgess, Kolasiński began making plans to build a second church. But the strict German and the fiery Pole were not destined to work well together. Kolasiński was a charismatic man, and the bishop was wary of his growing power within the diocese. To contain him, Borgess imposed strict spending and size limits on the construction of the new church. Kolasiński ignored him, aiming to build a large, lavish church, to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Borgess responded to this insubordination by suspending Kolasiński from his priestly duties and declared that anyone who dared to follow the rogue priest was, essentially, a schismatic.

This had the effect of gasoline poured on a smoldering fire. Kolasiński was already a hero within the Polish community—he had helped many families adjust to life in the United States—and so he rallied its members to his side. In defiance of Borgess, he established himself as the only legitimate authority for Polish Catholics in Detroit and reworked his plans for the new church to make it even bigger and grander than before. Worse, at least for the bishop, he hired a skilled canon lawyer to dispute his suspension and otherwise make his superior’s life miserable.

The new church, as Kolasiński saw it, would now be a testament to the resilience of the Polish people in the face of German aggression. And the fervor with which the priest pursued his aim only heightened his appeal. Kolasiński became a local legend: here was a priest who could drink most men under the table, whose signature mode of transport was a white carriage pulled by a team of six white horses, and who wasn’t afraid to stand up to any German, bishop or otherwise. The Polish men especially, many of whom were ex-revolutionary soldiers turned factory workers, loved and respected Kolasiński.

More than once, as negotiations occurred between Borgess, Kolasiński, and the city government, which, unsurprisingly, took the bishop’s part, the hard-fisted priest threatened demonstrations if he did not get his way. He was not afraid to call people into the streets, and hundreds—even thousands—of his followers were willing to obey. After his suspension there were several riots in Detroit. On one occasion the violence culminated in gunfire, and a young factory worker was shot to death on Christmas Day in 1885.

At the same time that Kolasiński ruled the streets, he also made headway in his case against Borgess. After appealing several rulings, he succeeded in having his case heard before the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Francesco Satolli, who consulted with Pope Leo XIII, and determined that the matter had to be settled at his desk. Satolli, a shrewd negotiator, found grounds to resolve the case. He declared that Borgess had violated Kolasiński’s right to due process by removing him hastily, but that Kolasiński had also erred by publicly countering the bishop and defying his orders. Satolli concluded that Borgess had to re-instate Kolasiński, but also that Kolasiński had to issue a public apology during one of his famous sermons, confessing his sins to his people. As difficult as this reversal was for the German bishop to swallow, it must have been ten times worse for Kolasiński. Here he was, a man who had fought hard to win the respect of a rough crowd who valued strength, pride, and resilience, being ordered to apologize and confess his errors in the most humiliating way possible.

But reconciliation did not occur. Much work was left to be done on the new church, which at this point was larger in some respects than the cathedral. Stained glass windows were commissioned and were displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. (At the time they were the largest in North America.) Borgess, meanwhile, resigned and retired to Kalamazoo, where he died several years later. Satolli, wanting to see a final resolution to the conflict, wisely chose not to appoint another German to succeed him, but rather a gregarious Irishman, John Samuel Foley. Bishop Foley and Father Kolasiński immediately forged a unique bond. Both strong men, given to enjoying a few drinks and hearty laughs, they found common ground in the stories of their oppressed mother countries—Poland under the Prussians, Germans, and Russians; Ireland under the British crown.

All was not immediately well, though. As the church—now officially to be named Sweetest Heart of Mary—was nearing completion, a financial panic swept the city. The debt on the church building was downgraded once, twice, and then a third time. At one point, the whole structure was sold at auction for less than a quarter of its total value. Fortunately, the parishioners were able to secure a loan through the Bank of England’s Montreal branch to repurchase the project and keep working toward its eventual completion. Many of the parishioners found themselves borrowing against their homes to prevent it from grinding to a halt. But their support never wavered. It would take more than just scarce money and resources to stop the hardy Polish immigrants from seeing it through. The fact that it was ever finished is, in fact, a testament to Polish resilience. They had come from an occupied territory, with nothing but a few dollars and the pride of being Polish and Catholic. And yet this was enough for them to establish a new little Poland and build one of the most impressive churches in the city.

The story doesn’t end there. By the time Sweetest Heart was completed, it had been under construction for nearly eight years. And it bore the marks of a church that had been built with much struggle. One of the stained glass windows, for instance, depicts a larger-than-life Saint Michael, who looks like Father Kolasiński, thrusting a spear into the stomach of a writhing Satan, whose face curiously resembles that of Bishop Borgess.

At this time, Kolasiński was still technically suspended, and while he and Foley respected each other, it appeared that a resolution of the matter would not happen before the scheduled consecration of the church. But rather than postpone the event, Kolasiński performed perhaps his most outlandish act yet. The night before the consecration was to take place, he left for the train station, where he met a man descending from a railway car whose identity remains unconfirmed to this day. Some say he was a priest from Wisconsin, while others, such as the archival historian Patrick Kopytek (to whom I am indebted for much of the information in this story), insist that he was a paid actor from Chicago. Regardless, the man who performed the initial consecration was not a valid member of the episcopate, and when news of this reached Bishop Foley, he understandably became irate.

Instead of ending communications between the bishop and the unpredictable priest, the so-called consecration had the opposite effect. The matter was quickly resolved, and a few months later Kolasiński found himself standing in his newly decorated pulpit with the eyes of several thousand of his supporters upon him, as he proclaimed his sins to them. Well, maybe “proclaimed” is too strong a word. He did state them audibly, but barely above a whisper, and in Latin. But what mattered to the bishop, who was standing next to him at the time, was that he could finally push the matter to the side, for the letter of the decree had been met, and there was more pressing business to attend to.

Kolasiński spent the remainder of his days improving the parish. He founded a boys’ school and a girls’ school and established a cemetery. (The cemetery was a bad idea. It was located in a particularly swampy section of the city, and heavy rains soon washed away much of the topsoil, such that bodies re-emerged from the ground a few years after their initial burial.) It was not long after the cemetery was established that Kolasiński himself became desperately ill. What his particular malady was no one can say, although typhoid and yellow fever were making their way around the city at the time. Kolasiński received his divine reward—whatever that may be—only three years after completion of Sweetest Heart.

Since that time, Sweetest Heart has had a number of pastors, each of Polish descent. The church faithfully preserves the vibrant Polish spirit that has vivified it for so long, through cultural devotions, faith formation, and the Latin Mass. While many things can be said about Sweetest Heart and the men who established the Polish Catholic community in the Detroit area, one thing can be asserted over all other observations. The Polish Catholic men and their families who built and fought for Sweetest Heart had a certain steadfastness about them. They were loyal to their faith, loyal to their homeland—and it is thanks to their strength, and the strength of those who carry on what they began, that Sweetest Heart stands today.