Polish Catholic community in Las Vegas celebrates tradition

Then they head to the church hall for the weekly after-Mass social gathering to eat the home-baked pastries that help to sustain their community identity.

On any given weekend, throughout the valley, worshippers attend services at which languages from Spanish to Tagalog are spoken and ethnic community bonds are strengthened. Now, after a frustratingly long time, Southern Nevada’s Polish community has found a new home at Our Lady of Las Vegas where, members hope, their own geographically dispersed community can be made stronger.

John Petkus, honorary consul to Poland in Las Vegas, estimates that the valley is home to about 12,000 Polish immigrants and about 60,000 people of Polish descent. Regardless of why they came or when they arrived, Petkus says many share a strong sense of national identity and a love of Polish tradition.

“A lot of them have been here for 10, 15, 20 years, and they all speak English quite well, but they were raised in Poland and a lot of their ways are still very European,” he says. “I’m third-generation, but a lot of our traditions in the family are very Polish.”

Among the Polish people’s most cherished traditions is fidelity to the Catholic Church. “Poland is over 90 percent Catholic,” Petkus notes. “Their religion is very important to the Poles.”

Historically, in Chicago and Detroit and other hotbeds of 20th century Polish immigration, Catholic parishes functioned as secular, as well as religious, social anchors.

“My wife went to a Polish-Catholic high school in Hamtramck (Michigan), which at the time was the Polish part of Detroit,” Petkus says, and Polish life “centered around the church — not only the spiritual life but the social life.”

Lacking a church and a Polish-speaking priest of their own, members of the Las Vegas Valley’s Polish community for several years had to settle for, at best, attending one Polish Mass a month, celebrated by a Polish-speaking priest flown in for the weekend from Chicago, Salt Lake City or elsewhere.

The Masses, celebrated at Guardian Angel Cathedral on the Strip and then Our Lady of Las Vegas, weren’t ideal, but they were something, recalls Eva Wasiuta, principal of the John Paul II Polish School, which convenes on Saturday mornings in rented classrooms at Trinity United Methodist Church, 6151 W. Charleston Blvd.

“It was everyone looking toward that one Sunday a month, getting everybody together and having a Mass together (and seeing) friends and other people,” says Wasiuta, a Polish immigrant who has lived in Las Vegas for more than 15 years.

“I was in Chicago, and I was one of those Polish priests who would come here on occasion for the Masses,” recalls the Rev. Gerald Grupczynski, a member of the Society of Christ, a religious order founded to serve Polish Roman Catholics around the world.

When the order learned that local Polish Catholics were seeking a full-time Polish-speaking priest, “we arranged it,” says Grupczynski, a Detroit-area native whose grandparents and great-grandparents immigrated from Poland.

Grupczynski arrived in Las Vegas in October 2008 and began saying weekly Polish Masses in the chapel at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish. When he was assigned as parish administrator at Our Lady of Las Vegas, 3050 Alta Drive, he took the Polish Masses with him.

So, on March 6, weekly Polish Masses, and the valley’s Polish ministry, moved to Our Lady of Las Vegas. There, Grupczynski and the Rev. Richard Philiposki, who also is parochial vicar at St. Anthony of Padua parish, serve as chaplains to the valley’s Polish Catholic community.

The 2 p.m. Sunday Polish Mass is a traditional-style Mass, with a choir, hymns played on an organ — although guitars usually are broken out for a contemporary number following Communion — and every word, from pre-Mass greetings to the closing hymn and announcements, spoken in Polish.

The Sunday Mass two weeks ago — another Polish Mass is celebrated at 6 p.m. Saturdays — drew a typical Sunday Mass crowd, including seniors, couples with kids, and young, and old, singles. Sunday Masses so far have drawn between 125 and 150 weekly, Grupczynski says, while the recently instituted Saturday evening Mass draws, perhaps, two dozen weekly.

Many Polish immigrants arrive in Las Vegas with no family, Grupczynski notes. Polish Mass “gives them an opportunity to keep their traditions alive, I guess, and just feel a little bit of being home in Poland. When they have an opportunity to come here and hear the hymns and pray in Polish, it gives them a sense of who they are.”

Gina Miljak, 62, is from Poland and has lived in Las Vegas for 15 years. She attends the 2 p.m. Sunday Mass, and the social gathering that follows, every week.

What does it mean to hear the Mass in Polish every week versus just once a month? “Like, before, your heart died,” she answers. “And, now, it has started beating again.”

Gathering for Mass “brings the community together,” she adds, “Everyone says we’re more like a family now.”

How important are the after-Mass socials? Barbara Sutowska, 62, jokes that “people say: ‘Oh, no coffee today? I’m not coming.’ There would be no Mass if there was no coffee.”

Jolanta Pawlowski, 45, says some in the community “left our entire families at home, and our parents. So we created our own separate family here. They’re extended family to us. At Christmastime, we get together to sing our traditional Christmas songs. So it goes beyond the Mass.”

At one table in the hall is an unexpected sight: teenagers, who not only spent a sunny Sunday afternoon at Mass, but are hanging around afterward.

Isabella Betkowski, 14, explains that she and her friends have known each other since childhood, but now attend schools across the valley and are involved in after-school activities. Just like their parents, they appreciate the opportunity coming to Mass every Sunday offers to see and catch up with one another.

Pamela Betkowski, 16, says she and her sister — who both speak English with no trace of an accent — learned Polish at home from their parents. Hearing the Mass in Polish makes it “more meaningful,” Pamela says, because “I understand stuff better.”

Wasiuta notes, too, that the John Paul II School, while not specifically a religious school, also is tied into the community’s religious life. About 47 students ages 4 to 12 attend the Saturday morning sessions to learn Polish and study the country’s culture and traditions.

The school is “very involved with the Our Lady of Las Vegas church at the Polish Mass,” Wasiuta says. For example, students read during a Stations of the Cross devotion at the church recently, and “a lot of times our students from our school participate in Masses,” she says.

On May 1, the school’s students also will take part in a program after the 2 p.m. Mass to commemorate the beatification of Polish-born Pope John Paul II.

Wasiuta says the school later this year will move to classrooms at Our Lady of Las Vegas school, cementing further that parish’s new status as the valley’s center for Polish pastoral ministry.

Eventually, “our dream would be to have our own parish,” Grupczynski says.

But, until then, members of the Polish community are happy to enjoy the closest they’ve come in a long while to having a permanent spiritual home. Better yet, Grupczynski says, parishioners at Our Lady of Las Vegas seem happy to have them back.

“Everyone I talk to, it’s, ‘How nice you’re going to have Polish Mass here again like we used to have before,’ ” he says. “They’re very welcoming.”

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.