Corpus Christi RC Church - Table of Contents

By the end of the 19th century, the East side of Buffalo was densely populated with Poles. Seeing the tremendous strain on the existing parishes and the growth of the Independent Polish Catholic Church, Bishop Quigley contacted the Franciscan Fathers in Syracuse, a German province, for assistance. The Rev. Jacek Fudzinski came to Buffalo in the spring of 1898 and met with the Bishop about founding still another Roman Catholic parish.

Fr. Fudzinski, with the Bishop's advice, took out loans and purchased 29 lots on Clark Street and Kent Streets. There were ten cottages on this property, and in one of these he established his little monastery. He had a larger frame building, where the present Rectory stands, serve as a parish church. Its seating capacity did not exceed 300 people.

In August 1898 work began on a three-story brick school building facing Clark Street. The first floor housed the parish church which could seat over a thousand people; the parish school was located on the second floor, while the third was used for social gatherings and meetings of parish societies. Classes in the school were taught by the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. Within the first year of existence, the new church boasted 650 families with a sizable youth element - and there was a steady stream of immigrants from Poland. With such numbers, a church building large enough to accommodate these growing numbers was a necessity.

In 1907 construction of the present sandstone church was begun and dedicated by Bishop Charles Colton and the Rev Bishop Pawel Rhode, the first Polish bishop in America, on June 13, 1909. Completed at a cost of $100,000, the 90 by 175 foot building seats 1,650 people. The copper domes of the towers are surmounted by crosses into which were stuffed hundreds of letters written by the school children of the parish during the building's construction

To instruct the parish children, Fr Fudzinski brought a newly founded religious order of women to the parish, the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, who taught until the school was closed in the 1980s.

Renovation and Beautification 1923-1926

Between 1923 and 1926, during the administration of the second pastor of the church, Fr. Michael Cieslik, a number of changes took place in the church:

• The interior of the church was painted for the first time and decorated with works of sacred art.
  • The artist adorned the sanctuary with paintings of six angels on canvas. They symbolize the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Anointing of the Sick, and serve as a background for the main altar where the Most Blessed Sacrament is preserved.
  • The interior of the church features some of the finest ecclesiastical art in the city. Installed during the 1920s, the crowning feature is a reproduction of Raphael's Disputa del santissimo in the semidome of the apse above the main altar
  • The paintings above the two side altars represent Franciscan themes. The one above the St. Anthony's altar represents B. V. Mary, Queen of the Franciscan Order, together with illustrious saints of the three Orders founded by St. Francis of Assisi. The other, above the Holy Family altar, represents St. Joseph in company of Franciscan saints and martyrs.
• The upper walls of the church above the center aisle are graced with six large Madonnas. They are reproductions from famous Marian shrines in Poland.
• Plain glass windows were replaced with stained glass. One of these is the exquisite rose-window which features the Blessed Virgin Mary being taken into heaven. All of these stained-glass windows, both in the church and in the vestibule, were imported from Munich, Germany.
• The fourteen Stations of the Cross were encased in large ornamental frames.

Renovation and Beautification for the Golden Jubilee in 1948
The fiftieth anniversary fell during Fr. Eustace Bartoszewicz's pastorship.

• The sanctuary was considerably enlarged, renovated and refreshed. A new marble pulpit and marble communion railings with marble steps and floor reaching to the side altars were installed. This gave a new look to the entire sanctuary.
• The lower portion of the walls in the church and in the vestibule were covered with pink marble imported from Italy.
• The paintings in the sanctuary and in the church were artistically redone by M. M. Rzeznik, the artist-painter. Ten smaller pictures of Saints over the arches, and the mural above the center entrance to the interior of the church, were the artist's original additions to the art treasures of the church.
• Two new bells were installed in one of the towers where up to that time only one bell called parishioners for Mass and other church services.
• Six luminous electric clocks were installed in the twin towers.
• Originally there were only three aisles in the church: the center and the two side aisles. Sometime after the celebration of the Golden Jubilee the side pews, which ran up to the walls, were shortened so that two new aisles were provided for the convenience and safety of the congregation.

Further Changes

• A great organ in the church in 1926. It was refurbished in 1968.
• In 1962 the exterior of the church was sandblasted for the first time. The lower roofs of the church were repaired and retarred.

By the early twentieth Century, this church, like parish churches in all of the immigrant neighborhoods of Buffalo, had become the actual as well as the symbolic focal point of community life. It was also the center of a whole range of secular activities: Needlework clubs; dramatic societies; bowling, baseball, and basketball teams; lodges; and mutual benefit associations all used the church as a meeting place. When it came to the parish church, there was little separation between the sacred and the secular.

During this period of completion of the building's interior, the parish's rate of growth declined, a direct result of the construction of the New York Central Terminal, several blocks away. To clear ample space for it, almost 300 homes were demolished. In 1929 the parish population decreased from 2,000 families to 1,750.

According to the WNY Catholic (Feb. 2005) the Corpus Christi church came under the administration of the Pauline Fathers (2 priests and 2 brothers), on Jan. 1, 2004, through the efforts of Bp. Mansell, who was familiar with the order as the Paulines had taken over a New York City inner city church earlier. Father Anselm Chalupka, OSPPE, is the pastor. 

Text sources:

• "Buffalo Architecture: A Guide," by Francis R. Kowsky, et. al. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981
• Houses of Worship: A Guide to the Religious Architecture of Buffalo, New York," by James Napora. Master of Architecture Thesis. Found at Buffalo Central Library
• Diamond Jubilee Album of Corpus Christi Parish, Buffalo, NY 1898-1973
• Polish Parishes in WNY
• Rev. Thomas Donohue, D.D., History of the Diocese of Buffalo (Buffalo, New York: The Buffalo Catholic Publication Co., Inc., 1929), pp. 174-175.
• High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York." by Mark Goldman. Pub. by State U. of New York Press, Albany, 1983, p. 181

See also:

• American Memory - Library of Congress 16 photos of parishioners in the church in 1943
• Polish Buffalo History - Index
• Highlights of Buffalo's History, 1907

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Special thanks to Corpus Christi Pastor Rev. Karl Kolodziejski, OFM, for his cooperation in 2002

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Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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