Cleveland Mass Mob XXXVI — Saint Colman

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXVI
Saint Colmán     
11a.m. Sunday 27 October 2019

West 65th and Madison

We are returning to the Irish cathedral. Cleveland Mass Mob IV on a rainy Pentecost 2014 was at St. Colman's. When i entered Saint Colman's church on Saint Patrick's Day 2009, a television cameraman behind me, said in surprise, “this place looks better than the cathedral [St. John the Evangelist Cleveland]”. Yes, St. Patrick's Mass, every year, is the most well attended Mass at St. Colman's. Let us try to have a healthy fraction on Mass Mob Day.

Last year the parish celebrated the church building's centennial. The parish began in 1880.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXV — Saint Jerome

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXV

Saint Jerome

10 a.m. Sunday 29 September 2019

15000 Lake Shore Boulevard

We are returning, we mobbed St. Jerome on June 28, 2015. We were well received. Saint Jerome's is ending their celebration of being a parish in this, their century year. Our Lady of Peace on Shaker Blvd. is celebrating their one hundredth year too. The European War (now called World War One) had ended, and national resources allowed for the formation of church expansion. Cleveland still had incoming migration and new parishes were created. Saint Jerome's is in North Collinwood, just beyond Bratenahl, a wee distance from Lake Erie.

The present church building began in 1950. It is one of the few post war churches built in a gothic fashion. The stained glass windows were made in Boston in 1951 in mediæval style, the great entrance window has delicate stone tracery, and niche stones are cut in that ancient look.  For some reason there is a heraldic Scottish lion, and thistle on the outside walls. Entry door are solid wood with carvings. In addition there is a beautiful side chapel dedicated to St. Joan of Arc. O, yes, Saint Jerome is a beautiful church.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXIV — Saint John Cantius

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXIV — Saint John Cantius

11.30 a.m. Sunday 11 August 2019

906 College

This will be a repeat mobbing. Cleveland Mass Mob X was on All Souls Day 2014.

This area of town is now called Tremont, and few places in this country are so dense with churches. When the smokey mills were being heavily manned by immigrants and sons of immigrants, they built churches for every nation and their creeds that populated them; in addition to the previous Germans and Yankees that came before them. [see and click]

Saint John Cantius was the Polish parish. It is one of the many churches in America, that was built in the Polish cathedral style. It is worth seeing. It is also one of the churches in town with an art deco element, here the angels above the capitals between the bays of the colonnades.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXIII—Saint Adalbert

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXIII 
Saint Adalbert & Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament
11 a.m. Pentecost Sunday 9 June 2019
2347 East 83rd Cleveland

We will be revisiting the parish. Cleveland Mass Mob III was 25 May 2014, this time on Pentecost. Every year that Cleveland Mass Mob has been active we mob on Pentecost. Pentecost is the birthday of the church, it is when the Holy Spirit filled the followers of Jesus. It is the most opportune date in the year for mobbing.

The exterior of Saint Adalbert, Cleveland is patterned after the neo-classical cathedral in Salzburg; but it is older, the original was bombed during WWII. The original Czech (Bohemian) congregation moved into their second home in 1911. In 1961, there was a merger with Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, which had been the first African American parish in Cleveland. The combined parish was closed for public worship, for a time, waiting for Rome to successfully intervene.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXII—Immaculate Heart of Mary

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXII—Immaculate Heart of Mary
4 p.m. Saturday 4 May 2019
6700 Lansing Avenue
May crowning after Mass

The parish began in 1894, and was separate from the Diocese of Cleveland.  Fr. Anton Kolaszewski was the founding pastor. He earlier was the first pastor at St. Stanislaus, a few blocks away. In 1908, the parish joined the diocese.

The original wooden church had a fire. The present church is from 1914, and is Romanesque in architecture. The windows are from Chicago's Munich Studio, and made by Max Guler. The image above is Jesus calming the Tempest, and speaks to the early history of the parish's relationship to the diocese. The windows are beautiful, and there are smaller figures to appreciate within the larger picture.

Currently a replica of the "Gdansk Shipyard Workers Monument" is in the church. The original was built in memoriam of workers killed in the strike of August 1980. This copy had been in St. Casimir Cleveland from 1985 to 2009, and to save it for the Polish community it was transferred to Immaculate Heart.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXI — St. Philomena

Cleveland Mass Mob XXXI

St. Philomena — East Cleveland

13824 Euclid Avenue 

10 a.m. Sunday 31 March 2019

Fr. Thomas Mahon was pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Cleveland. Glenville (which then was outside of Cleveland) wanted a parish. Fr. Mahon would also become pastor at the new parish of St. Aloysius. People in East Cleveland asked Fr. Mahon to organise another parish, which became St. Philomena in 1902. St. Philomena is still in East Cleveland on Euclid Avenue. At the time, there were no Catholic churches on Euclid Avenue inside the city of Cleveland. That part of Euclid was Millionaires' Row, and no Catholic churches were allowed. On the parallel Superior Avenue there were several, St. Thomas Aquinas being the furthest east.

Since 2009, St. Philomena and St. Ann (Cleveland Heights) are part of the new combined parish of Communion of Saints. The closed Christ the King (East Cleveland), and closed St. Louis (Cleveland Heights) were merged into the new parish.

An open door is an invite.

Cleveland Mass Mob XXX — Saint Stanislaus

Cleveland Mass Mob XXX

Saint Stanislaus

11.30 a.m. 7 October 2018

East 65th & Forman

This will be a second mobbing, four years after the first.

The parish of St. Stanislaus was formed in 1873, and at first worshipped at St. Mary's of the Flats (the first Catholic church and later cathedral in Cleveland). In 1879 they moved to the Franciscan St. Joseph on Woodland. In 1881 a new church was built in South Broadway area of Newburgh called Warszawa. The present church was built from 1886 to 1891. St. Stan's exterior was built in Gothic revival style. Of the Catholic churches in the US, built in that style, only St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan is larger.  The church was 232 feet high, with two steeples. St. Michael the Archangel, on the west side, had its taller steeple at 232 feet also. At the time, these were the two tallest buildings in Cleveland. A tornado struck on 21 April of 1909, the twin steeples toppled, and a child was killed. The steeple on St. Wenceslas on Broadway also fell. St. Stan's was rebuilt to a height 122 feet high.

St. Stanislaus is gothic on the outside, on the inside it is baroque, it is the most rococo church in Cleveland. During the year, it is often well garlanded with plants and other decorations. In addition to being a parish church, it is also a shrine church, and the co-cathedral of Cleveland. The shrine is that of St. Stanislaus Szczepanowski (Bishop and Martyr). Above is a window depicting King Boleslaus II the Bold murdering Stanislaus. Stanislaus was bishop of Krakow, a successor to the office was Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II), there are items of his in the church.

Saint Stanislaus is a Polish parish church, and the architectural style is loosely called the Polish Cathedral Style in America. Many such parish churches across the country were built on a large scale. Cleveland has a few of them, and we have mobbed them.