News Release from the St.Florian Parish Office
June 26, 2024,
For Immediate Release:
Final Mass to be Held at St. Ladislaus in Hamtramck on June 29
The final Mass will be held at St. Ladislaus Roman Catholic Church in Hamtramck at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 29, exactly 72 years to the date that ground was broken for the building. All former parishioners and alumni of the schools are welcome to attend.
Founded on September 25, 1920 with the appointment of its first pastor Fr. Boleslaus Gdaniec, St. Ladislaus Parish was organized in the rapidly growing village of Hamtramck as the third Roman Catholic parish in Hamtramck to serve the Polish community that lived north of St. Florian Parish.
As the population in Hamtramck began to decline and inflation negatively effected the parish’s finances in the 1970s and 1980s, St. Ladislaus High School closed in June of 1982. Ten years later, due to declining enrollment and fewer parishioners attending, St. Ladislaus elementary also closed. On January 1, 2012, St. Ladislaus Parish ceased to exist as it merged with Transfiguration/Our Lady Help of Christians and St. Louis the King parishes in Detroit to form Blessed (later St.) John Paul II Parish with three worship sites.
In 2014, the new parish announced that it would close the St. Ladislaus worship site. The former parishioners of St. Ladislaus organized and presented evidence to the Archdiocese that weekly collections could adequately support the operating costs of the church as well as the costs for a priest to say at least two Masses each weekend and provided two options to the Archdiocese that would allow for the pastoral care of those worshipping at St. Ladislaus.
In June of 2016, Fr. Mirosław Frankowski, S.Chr., pastor of St. Florian, with the permission of the Society of Christ, offered to assume the pastoral care of the worshipers at the St. Ladislaus worship site, the Archbishop approved, and St. John Paul II Parish donated all of the former St. Ladislaus Parish property to St. Florian Parish. As a result, St. Ladislaus became a chapel of St. Florian Parish. A sense of revival appeared at St. Ladislaus, the number of Masses offered increased, and repairs were made to the church.
Unfortunately, after the pandemic, Mass attendance and weekly collections decreased while the need to make significant physical improvements to the church building increased. On May 18, 2024, Fr. Tomasz Pietrzak, S.Chr., the current pastor of St. Florian, informed the parishioners that after prayerful consideration guided by a data-driven process, on June 10, 2024, a request to close St. Ladislaus Chapel would be presented to Archbishop Vigneron. On June 15, 2024, Archbishop Vigneron issued a decree relegating St. Ladislaus Church to secular but not unbecoming use effective July 1, 2024.
Image: https://www.hamtramckstories.org/photo-gallery.html
