Grochowski, Thomas, Rev.
(Mar. 9, 1866 - Jul. 10, 1917)
CSSR priestBorn in Witkowo, a village about 17 km southeast of Gniezno, the capital of Poland in the eighth century, Thomas Grochowski first attracted the attention of his teachers in St. Peter's Catholic school in Philadelphia. For many years it was the custom for the Redemptorists, who had opened the grammar school in 1843, to pick someone out of class who would become fit subjects to join their order. To meets the increasing demands of their order in the United States, the Redemptorists located their novitiate at Baltimore in 1849, and when the heirs of Charles Carroll left his estate to them, the province moved the Redemptorist novitiate to Annapolis, Maryland. In 1868, however, it built a spacious scholasticate at Ilchester, Maryland, which is where Grochowski, the only Pole in the student body, studied, first in college and then in the seminary. He entered the novitiate at Annapolis in 1885 and was professed there as a Redemptorist on August 2, 1886. He was ordained to the priesthood at Ilchester on April 4, 1891. He spent his second novitiate at Saratoga, New York, from August 1892 to January 1893.
Shortly after, his superior, who had the headquarters of the Redemptorist priests in America at St. Alphonsus Church in Baltimore, sent Grochowski to Saint Wenceslaus parish in Baltimore to serve the Bohemians (Czechs), Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians in the parish because of his knowledge of languages. Never before was the Archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, as happy as he was in years between 1893 and 1896, for Father Grochowski calmed the different factions in the parish.
From 1896 to 1902, while he was stationed at the Bohemian church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, 321 E. 61st St., New York City, Grochowski worked with the Missionary Society of the Most Holy Redeemer in the State of New York. Then, from 1903 to 1910, while his address was at St. Alphonsus, a German parish, 308 West Broadway, New York, he spent nearly all his time conducting Polish missions across the country.
At the same time, staring the Redemptorists in the face, were no less than two missions and sixteen stations without a priest in a Canadian diocese. They sent Grochowski to Brandon, the second largest city in Manitoba, Canada, where 150 Polish families were waiting for a Polish priest to administer the sacraments and baptize their babies. Among them was Kazimierz Broda, who came from what is now the southeastern Polish province of Podkarpacie. His son, Walter Broda, who is now in the Hockey Hall of Fame, was born in Brandon on May 15, 1914, and it could be that Grochowski baptized him. In 1913 the Poles formed a PNA lodge at Brandon.
Despite failing health. Grochowski conducted missions in Canada as long as he could, and in 1916, when he entered St. Peter's Hospital at Albany, New York, he was told he had cancer. Two operations, three months apart, were of no avail. He died on July 10, 1917, at St. Clement's rectory in Saratoga Springs, New York, and was laid to rest with other Redemptorists there.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)