Removal of beloved statue from shuttered church delayed

A beloved statue inside a shuttered Pilsen church, at the heart of a fight between former parishioners and the Archdiocese of Chicago, was exposed for a few hours on Tuesday as crews prepared to move it to another church in the neighborhood.

Contractors had arrived at St. Adalbert Church that morning and removed an 8-by-10-foot section of the east exterior wall. Through the hole, the back of the statue could be seen.

A forklift sat in the alley, ready to pick up the statue. Police tried to clear protesters from the alley.

Within hours, however, the hole was boarded up, and a request from the city for more details on the project meant the statue, which has been in St. Adalbert’s for decades, would be there a little longer.

The statue, a marble replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta, depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother, Mary, after the crucifixion. There had been protests in vain to keep the church open, and now there are protests against moving the statue from St. Adalbert, 1650 W. 17th St., to St. Paul’s Catholic Church, 2127 W. 22nd Place, about a mile away.

St. Paul’s absorbed the other parish after St. Adalbert closed in 2019.

Plans to move the statue first got underway at the end of August. But the statue stayed put then due to a permitting issue. A group of former parishioners have since kept a 24/7 vigil at the church to prevent the statue’s removal.

“I’m gonna get arrested over this,” Judy Vazquez, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday. Vazquez, 65, came prepared, with her lawyer’s number written in marker on her forearm.

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Around 20 protesters faced an equal number of police outside the church. They prayed in English, Spanish and Polish.

Though heavily Latino today, the West Side neighborhood was once a destination for Polish immigrants, a legacy that lives on in a group that prays outside the church in Polish and had attended the Polish-language Masses once celebrated there.

“This was built by Polish immigrants,” said Anina Jakubowki, who grew up on 18th Street and attended Mass at the church.

Built by Polish immigrants in 1914, ownership of the church was eventually transferred to the archdiocese. Jakubowski said the statue and the church ought to remain because of its significance for the Polish community.

“They didn’t leave Europe with bags of money. What they did bring with them was their deep faith in God,” Jakubowski said.

Sun-Times file

Vazquez and the others argued that if the Pieta must be moved, it should go to another Polish church. “That would at least be some recompense,” said Ana Leja, another leader of the group and originally from Krakow, Poland.

The archdiocese said where the statue goes is up to St. Paul’s.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez joined protesters outside on Tuesday to demand that the archdiocese meet with parishioners to find a solution.

“What they’re doing is really sad. They’re stepping on parishioners,” he said.

Some fear as soon as the statue is removed, the building will be sold.

“We have a huge concern that if we let this site go it will be sold off and developed to become luxury condos,” said Ugo Okere, a local organizer at the scene.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

After two dispersal orders from police over the course of about three hours, an officer called off the statue removal for the day, citing an order from the city’s Department of Buildings, which is requesting details on “the masonry opening, how the opening will be braced and supported, and how the opening will be closed,” according to a department spokesperson.

The protesters sighed with relief as police left, but know the fight isn’t over.

“They will remove the Pieta no matter what,” Leja said, “unless a miracle happens — and they do happen.”

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Some worried the building already had been sold. A spokesperson for the archdiocese said that was not the case, but declined to say if the building was under contract.

As contractors covered the hole in the church wall with plywood, some protesters were elated and reinvigorated in their plan to keep watch.

“Praise God and the Virgin, we’ve won another huge victory,” Vazquez said.

Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.

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