Kluger, Francis, Rev.
(Apr. 22, 1880 - )
Church builderNot all priests from Poland hung on in the United States. Rev. Francis Kluger, who came from Silesia in 1905, when it was German territory, found it better to go back when it was restored to Polish hands. He went to school in the industrialized village of Siemianowice, near Katowice, and went to Italy for a college education and Belgium to study for the priesthood. Shortly after he was ordained in Lovain, Belgium, on June 28, 1905, he arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, and was assigned by Bishop Matthew Harkins to form a Polish parish in the village of Quidnick in the eastern part of Kent County. From the very beginning of their arrival, Polish families found it hard, owing to absence of Polish priests in Pawtuxent Valley, to fulfill their spiritual obligations. If they could afford it, they traveled as far as St. Adalbert's Catholic Church, established for the Polish souls who worked in the textile mills of Providence in 1903, and before that a Polish priest would hear confessions and celebrate Mass in the basement of the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul. St. Michael's Society, formed by the Polish settlers of Quidnick in 1903, gave Father Kluger a headstart. He spent fifteen months in Quidnick and left without building a church. Bishop Harkins gave him a bigger assignment in Central Falls, near the Massachusetts border, where there was a larger Polish colony. Because the number was larger, Rev. Adalbert Duczmal, the first pastor of St. Adalbert's in Providence, traveled to Central Falls to celebrate Mass.
Father Kluger organized St. Joseph's parish in Central Falls on Dec. 6, 1906. At first he held services in the hall of Sacred Heart Church in Pawtucket. Then, in March 1907, he bought Temperance Hall, a wooden building built for theatrical productions, and spent $10,000 to turn it into a house of worship. He divided the basement into three classrooms and found an elderly teacher, the organist, and himself to teach the Polish children. Pretty soon the building was too small to take care of the growth of the Polish community. In 1915 he bought land and approved plans for a new $45,000 edifice, but five or six nights before Easter the boiler in the makeshift church exploded and fire took care of the rest. The pastor of St. Basil's in Central Falls came to his rescue. Father Kluger held Easter and other services in a hall of St. Basil's Church.
By the following Easter he had a large and beautiful church, built in Gothic style, and for a while an assistant priest. In November 1917, whether he was sick, unhappy in Central Falls, or lost the confidence of the new bishop, he changed places with Father Lawrence Malecki, pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa parish in Ouidnick, and received news of uprisings in Silesia, not one, not two, but three of them. He gathered as much clothing, food, and money as he could to send to the victims of the uprisings. Finally in 1921, although the majority of Upper Silesia voted in a plebiscite to stay with Germany, Katowice, known as Kattowitz in prior years, became capital of an autonomous Silesia. It covered the village where Father Kluger was born and raised. Hence he found it convenient to return to Poland.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)