KOPCZYNSKI, REV. IGNATIUS (1911 - 1954)Rev. Ignatius Kopczynski, who was born on February 18, 1911, in New Waverly, Texas, had a strange career as a Catholic priest in the diocese of San Antonio. Nothing is known of his immigrant parents. He was the first graduate of St. Michael's parochial school in San Antonio to study for the priesthood. St. John's Seminary, established by the bishop of San Antonio in 1915, was the only Catholic institution in the United States that had high school, college, and theology departments at one site. It was run by St. Vincentian fathers, and Kopczynski was under their care from 1926 to April 5, 1937, when he was ordained at San Fernando Cathedral.
It was at that seminary, which changed its name to Assumption in 1952 when it moved to a new campus, that Pope John Paul II spent September 13, 1987, had lunch with Texas bishops, and met Polish people from Panna Maria and other places.
Father Kopczynski served briefly as assistant at St. Patrick's, almost two miles from San Fernando Cathedral, 31 years before the Irish people marched through the streets of San Antonio on St. Patrick's Day. It was as close as he came to shamrock madness again. His next assignment took to St. Michael's Church in Weimar, a center of trade for pecans, poultry, and dairy products, 87 miles west of Houston, where he was an assistant pastor in 1938 and 1942-1944. He was pastor at Luling, 160 miles west of Houston, from 1938 to 1942. The population of the old cattle center dropped from 5,970 in the 1930s to 4,437 in the 1940s.
The decline in the population of Luling was a sign of things to come in the last ten years of Father Kopczynski's life. On January 21, 1944, he was appointed pastor of St. Boniface Church in Hobson, three and a half miles south of Falls City in Karnes County, Texas. He must have felt like the bishop sent him to purgatory, for Hobson was literally a ghost town. It had little more than 100 people of Czech, German, and Polish descent. When he was sent from there to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, Koerth, three miles west of U. S. Highway 77 in Lavaca County, south of Hallettsville, the population of Koerth was in the 30s or 40s. In the next pastorate, SS Cyril and Methodius, Cistern, a Czech settlement, the population was about 75. Last but not least, he died September 16, 1954, as pastor of Immaculate Conception in Panna Maria. The population of Panna Maria was then less than 100.
Written by: Edward Pinkowski (2006)