BY JACK KOMPERDA
Daily Herald Staff Writer

The Rev. Edmund Jastrzebski preaches to a sparsely attended Sunday Mass at Chicago's St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church. Once the heart of Chicago's Polish community, it now offers as many Spanish Masses as Polish ones.

The morning sun slips through the stained-glass window of Chicago's St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, casting shadows over the empty faux marble interior of the sanctuary.

Decades ago, families packed 12 Polish services on any given Sunday and filled each of the 1,800 age-worn seats.

But most of the people are gone now.

The oak choir stalls flanking the baroque altar once were filled with altar boys needed to assist overflowing crowds. Now, they sit empty.

Nearly half of Polish immigrants have forsaken traditional Chicago enclaves to make their homes in the suburbs. The growth in the number of suburban Polish immigrants in the previous decade is about three times as high as that seen between 1940 and 1990.

But as Poles say goodbye to Chicago, they also leave behind a church system built to provide the community a unifying social structure.

"The parish was the center of the neighborhood in Chicago," said the Rev. John Nowak of the Congregation of the Resurrection, an order of priests influential in founding many of the first Polish churches in Chicago. "Everything was connected with the church."

As Poles settle into newer and often multiethnic enclaves, they are increasingly finding their spiritual needs aren't being met by the English-speaking churches in the suburbs.

In just the past seven years, the Archdiocese of Chicago has scrambled to double the amount of Polish-language services in the Northwest suburbs, adding Masses in Wheeling, Streamwood and Mount Prospect.

Archdiocesan officials admit they were caught off guard by the pace of the westward migration.

Krystyna Flaherty, former Chicago archdiocesan director of the Office for European Catholics, said requests for Polish ministry haven't slowed, only moved farther north and west to villages like Algonquin and Mundelein.

Often the solution involves informal arrangements between individual churches and religious orders that provide for one of their priests to make weekend commutes into the new neighborhoods.

The Rev. Edmund Jastrzebski travels to St. Thomas Becket Catholic Church in Mt. Prospect. It's one of three locations he commutes to each Sunday to celebrate Mass in Polish.

Logistically, serving the needs of this broadening population has become a nightmare with the church's priest shortage.

"It's not as simple as a priest saying a Mass and leaving," Flaherty said. "We have to deal with the problem of priests commuting to the area."

To combat it, the Chicago Archdiocese set up a one-year English-language immersion program for Polish seminary students interested in working abroad. They hope the program eventually will provide a steady influx of priests from Poland to help with the ministry efforts.

Those not satisfied with the options in the suburbs continue to commute to Chicago.

"If you take a look at our parking lot, most of the cars have stickers from everywhere but Chicago," said the Rev. Francis Rog, a priest at St. Hyacinth Catholic Basilica in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood.

Built in 1894, the church has long been regarded as a sort of mecca for Poles living in the Chicago area. It eclipses all Polish churches with more than 6,000 Poles packing the pews for Sunday Masses.

Since its inception, the Polish church system did much more than offer Sunday Masses and the associated rituals of Catholicism for migrating Poles.

The parishes, which had strict boundaries similar to those in rural Poland, were the epicenter of the old neighborhoods, running credit unions, schools and legal services.

The parishes' power dates back nearly 140 years to the establishment of church ministries in small Polish colonies throughout the country.

The immigration mushroomed from 1860 to 1900 by nearly 2 million, as Poles were drawn by work opportunities to industrial cities such as New York, Detroit and Chicago.

In Chicago, especially, they established one of the strongest ethnic parish systems in the country, helping build 43 Polish-language Catholic churches in the area by 1928.

The first and largest of these was St. Stanislaus Kostka, built in 1867 on Noble Street near Division Avenue. At the turn of the century, the church had 40,000 members, making it the country's largest parish.

When the church faced the wrecking ball to make room for the Kennedy Expressway in the 1950s, the Polish community fought furiously to save its flagship sanctuary.

The sharp turn near the Division Avenue exit reflects their successful efforts. The victory, however, was bittersweet. Older immigrants still blame the expressway for splitting the neighborhood and destroying a vibrant community once called Polish Downtown.

The Rev. Edmund Jastrzebski celebrates Mass with an overflowing crowd at St. Thomas Becket Catholic Church in Mount Prospect.

The church, once a beacon for Poles, can barely fill the pews. The struggle is reflected on a recent Sunday, when only 15 people show up for the single Polish Mass offered.

The church's mission has evolved with its ever-changing neighborhood. The parish now primarily consists of Hispanic immigrants and yuppies who have moved into the area.

Its only Polish priest, the Rev. Edward Jastrzebski, makes use of his time by traveling each Sunday to St. Thomas Becket in Mount Prospect, where an explosive growth of Polish families has fueled the need for a native Mass.

In addition to the 9 a.m. Mass at St. Stanislaus Kostka, Jastrzebski occasionally fills in for a priest at another Chicago parish.

"The parish is thankful just to have this," Jastrzebski says. "A person prays best when he becomes one with the Lord. He connects with the Lord through language."

By the time Mass at St. Thomas begins, the seats at the church are all taken. The wall space fills up quickly and the rest spill into the vestibule, crowding the emergency doors.

It's like this every Sunday, by most accounts. The St. Thomas pastor, Rev. Edward Panek, is reticent to give exact numbers for fear the local fire department would object.

But at least 400 people show up every week. Fully one-third of them are children.

While the Sunday commutes often exert a mental and physical toll - he doesn't have his first meal until well into the afternoon - Jastrzebski takes to heart the need of his parishioners.

"It may be stressful and take time, but there's joy in doing this work," he says.

Part 3: One son's struggle to escape Polska's gripping poverty.