Standing at 825 North Carpenter Street in Chicago's River West neighborhood, St. John Cantius Church rises from the same ground where Polish immigrants laid its cornerstone in 1893. The massive brick and stone edifice, modeled after the churches of eighteenth-century Krakow, has watched its surroundings transform from a Polish enclave called Wygnana Polska, or Expatriate Poland, into a developing district of townhomes and luxury lofts. Through more than 130 years of demographic shifts, the construction of the Kennedy Expressway, and the slow decay of midcentury city neighborhoods, the parish has remained, its bells still sounding the Angelus over the surrounding blocks. Today, St. John Cantius is one of the most distinctive Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago, celebrated for its solemn celebration of both forms of the Roman Rite, an internationally recognized sacred music program, three complete sets of functioning bells, a museum-quality Neapolitan Nativity scene, and the religious community of priests and brothers known as the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius.

From Wygnana Polska to River West

By the end of the nineteenth century, Polish immigrants had transformed the area around St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish on Chicago's near west side into the largest Polish community in the United States. By 1892, the mother parish was considered the largest in the world with forty thousand parishioners, and a new wave of arrivals had begun spilling southeast along Chicago Avenue into a neighborhood that quickly earned the nickname Wygnana Polska. On December 10, 1892, the Polish newspaper New World announced plans for a new parish near Chicago Avenue and Carpenter Streets. Fr. Vincent Barzyński of the Congregation of the Resurrection, pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka, purchased several lots at Front (now Fry) and Carpenter for the substantial sum of seventy-five thousand dollars, twenty homes had to be demolished to clear the site, and he named Fr. John Kasprzycki, C.R. as the first pastor.

Work began in the spring of 1893 under architect Adolphus Druiding, who designed a church measuring 230 feet long and 107 feet wide with seating for two thousand. On September 4, 1893, Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan laid and blessed the cornerstone, which still carries the inscription drawn from Genesis 28:17, Awesome is this place. It is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. The basement church was completed in time for Christmas, and Fr. Szymon Kobrzyński offered the parish's first Mass there on December 25, 1893, with altars fashioned from unfinished wood in conscious imitation of the stable at Bethlehem. The same month, Sister Mary Josaphat and a companion of the School Sisters of Notre Dame began classes for 150 children, launching a parish school that would eventually enroll over two thousand pupils.

The economic panic following the Columbian Exposition and the depression that followed slowed construction of the upper church. Three years passed while the twin bell towers rose and the exterior shell took shape, but the interior could not be finished. As a last resort, the pastor and parish committee began a novena to St. Joseph on March 9, 1898. By March 28, the parish had raised the three thousand dollars needed to complete the building. On December 11, 1898, Archbishop Feehan presided over the blessing and dedication, processing with parishioners, school children, bands, and the Polish Cavalry from his residence on North Avenue back to the new church. By 1918, the Silver Jubilee, the parish had grown to roughly twenty-three thousand souls with twenty-five hundred children in the school.

Two decades of disruption followed. The construction of Ogden Avenue in the 1920s cut through the neighborhood and stripped the parish of many families. The Great Depression, then the construction of the Kennedy Expressway in the late 1950s and early 1960s, completed the demographic upheaval. By 1967, with most school families gone, the last class graduated and the School Sisters of Notre Dame departed after seventy-five years of service. The parish never closed and never went into debt, supported by former parishioners who continued returning each Sunday. The surrounding neighborhood has since been rebuilt as River West, an upscale district where the parish has resumed attracting growing families from across the city and suburbs.

Two Forms of the Roman Rite, Every Day

The cornerstone of parish life at St. John Cantius is the daily offering of both forms of the Roman Rite. Since the parish was chosen in 1990 by the Archdiocese of Chicago as the site for the renewed celebration of the older form of the Mass mandated by the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, both the Ordinary Form (the Missal of 2002, often called the Novus Ordo) and the Extraordinary Form (the Missal of 1962, the Tridentine Mass) have been celebrated side by side. The parish is one of only a handful of places in the country where this dual tradition is sustained at such depth day after day.

The Sunday schedule begins at 7:30 a.m. with a Low Mass in the 1962 Missal in Latin. On the first Sunday of the month, that Mass uses the 2002 Missal. At 9:00 a.m. a Sung Mass in English follows, then an 11:00 a.m. Sung Mass in Latin, both from the 2002 Missal. At 12:30 p.m. a Solemn High Mass in the 1962 Missal is sung in Latin, after which the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for Adoration. Vespers and Benediction are prayed at 4:15 p.m., and a Sung Mass in English closes the day at 5:00 p.m., followed immediately by Compline.

On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, the day opens with a 6:30 a.m. Low Mass in the 1962 Missal, followed by Matins and Lauds at 7:30 a.m. and a Sung Mass in English at 8:00 a.m. Mid-Day Prayer is offered at 11:45 a.m., Rosary and Vespers at 4:30 p.m., and Compline at 7:00 p.m. Wednesdays add a second Low Mass in the 1962 Missal at 7:30 p.m., followed by Compline. On Saturdays, a Low Mass in the 1962 Missal is offered at 8:30 a.m., with the Anticipated Mass in English at 5:00 p.m.

Confessions are heard Sunday mornings beginning twenty minutes before each Mass, on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. and 4:45 p.m., on Wednesday evenings at 7:15 p.m., and after the 7:30 p.m. Mass on First Fridays. The priests also offer guidance for those approaching the sacrament, encouraging frequent confession as preparation for the Eucharist while asking that confessions not be made more often than once a week.

All Masses and the Divine Office are broadcast on the parish livestream, which developed rapidly after the COVID-19 pandemic began. When Chicago churches closed in March 2020, the Canons Regular began livestreaming their daily Masses from the chapel of St. Joseph House, then from the church itself as soon as public worship resumed. Viewers from around the world continued to follow even after restrictions lifted, and the parish invested in high-quality equipment to sustain this new apostolate.

The Canons Regular of St. John Cantius

The parish is staffed by the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, a religious community of priests and brothers dedicated to what they call the Restoration of the Sacred. The community was founded on August 15, 1998, the Feast of the Assumption, by Fr. C. Frank Phillips, C.R., then pastor of St. John Cantius, with the approval of Archbishop Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. Phillips had spent the previous decade reintroducing the Latin Liturgy, reviving devotions such as Vespers and Benediction, the Corpus Christi procession, Stations of the Cross, First Friday and First Saturday devotions, Tenebrae, and the St. Joseph and St. Anne Novenas, all of which had largely faded from parish practice.

The Canons Regular's mission is to help Catholics rediscover a profound sense of the sacred through solemn liturgies, devotions, sacred art, sacred music, and instruction in Church heritage, catechetics, and Catholic culture. In 2019, when Fr. Joshua Caswell, SJC was elected the community's first Superior General, he also became the first pastor of St. John Cantius who was not a member of the Congregation of the Resurrection, the religious order that had founded the parish and staffed it for 126 years. Fr. David Yallaly, SJC was installed as pastor on December 31, 2023, when the community decided that the responsibilities of Superior General and parish pastor could no longer be combined.

The patron of both the parish and the religious community is St. John of Kenty, known in Polish as Jan Kanty, a fifteenth-century priest, philosopher, and professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Theologian, scholar, and patron of teachers, students, priests, and pilgrims, he died in Krakow on Christmas Eve, 1473, and was canonized by Pope Clement XIII in 1676. Pope St. John Paul II maintained a lifelong devotion to his near-contemporary countryman and visited his tomb in Krakow in 1997. Above the high altar at St. John Cantius hangs a painting of the Miracle of the Jug, depicting a 1464 event in which St. John comforted a servant girl whose jug of water had broken and, as he helped gather the pieces, restored the vessel and turned the water to sweet milk. The miracle became a symbol for the Canons Regular's Restoration of the Sacred: that what is broken can be made whole, and nothing is beyond repair.

The Restoration of a Golden Church

When Fr. Phillips became pastor in 1988, the church's interior had been neglected for decades. The 1933 redecoration, in which copper-based leaf was used in place of real gold and then lacquered with hairspray, had darkened everything, and a shoddy 1960s restoration attempt had dulled the once-vivid colors. The parish's Cantian Fund, launched in the fall of 1988, began generating the revenues needed for restoration. Among the earliest projects were the cleaning and repair of the painting of St. John Cantius above the high altar, the cleaning and regilding of the two side altars, the cleaning and reinforcement of the south bell tower, and the re-electrification of the tower bells.

In 2011 the parish launched a complete interior restoration, which was completed in two years. The 2015-2016 season brought a full restoration and regilding of the high altar. The St. Joseph Altar was restored and regilded in 2021, with a solemn blessing during the Solemn High Mass for Candlemas on February 2, 2022. The restoration of Our Lady's Altar was completed and dedicated on October 7, 2022. In 2023, the parish commissioned three new stained glass windows of the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael for the main stairwell, designed by Baltic Art Studio, whose founders trained in Vilnius and restored the Tiffany Dome at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The Casavant Frères pipe organ nicknamed Tina Mae, originally built in 1926 for St. James United Methodist Church and unused for many years in a closed church on the city's south side, was cleaned, restored, and installed in 2013. Cardinal George blessed the organ on October 20, 2013. The parish celebrated the centennial of its bells in 2016 and marked the organ's centennial with a festival concert. The parish also houses a museum-quality Neapolitan Praesepio, or Nativity scene, acquired in 1998 from the last descendant of a Roman family who had owned it for generations. Comprising more than two hundred figures sculpted in terracotta with glass eyes, hemp-and-wire bodies, and wood hands and feet, dressed in eighteenth-century Neapolitan costume, the Praesepio is one of only four museum-quality examples in America and is displayed in the lower church near the southwest staircase.

The 2016 online competition Church Madness, hosted by ArtandLiturgy.com, named St. John Cantius The Most Beautiful Church in America after it moved past the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and finally won the National Churchpionship against the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.

Three Sets of Bells Over River West

Few parishes in the country can claim three complete sets of functioning bells, and the bells of St. John Cantius are heard throughout River West, West Town, and River North. The oldest set, four bells cast by Meneely & Co. of West Troy, New York, were blessed on Palm Sunday 1897 with three of them receiving Christian names: St. Anne (the largest, weighing roughly 5,500 pounds and the heaviest bell in a Catholic church in Chicago), St. Anselm and St. Hedwig, and St. Florian. The fourth was given the designation Sine Nomine, or Unnamed. The bells rang the Angelus at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. and served as the timekeeper of the neighborhood. Restored in 1989 with a twenty-five thousand dollar gift from the National Security Bank of Chicago, they now ring from automatic strikers, mark the quarter-hour in a cuckoo pattern dating to the fourteenth century, and sound for weddings, funerals, and major celebrations. In 2006, following a neighbor's complaint to the City of Chicago and a threatened lawsuit, the church agreed to stop ringing the bells after 9 p.m.

In 1999 a 24-bell tubular chime by the Chicago-based J.C. Deagan company, rescued from the Laureldale Cemetery in Reading, Pennsylvania, was installed and blessed by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry. The Deagan chime plays harmonized melodies twice daily, at 12:20 p.m. and 8:20 p.m., with the repertoire changing to suit the liturgical calendar. Its manual keyboard, located in the northwest tower, can be played by the parish organist.

In 2006 the parish acquired a third set, a two-octave chromatic carillon cast by the Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry of Asten in the Netherlands and installed in a carillon designed by Firma Prais of Poland. Mounted outdoors on the elevator tower in the church's northeast corner, the carillon plays a range of hymns and Marian antiphons twenty minutes past every hour, including Salve Regina, Ave Maris Stella, Veni Veni Emanuel, Conditor, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World, O Sacred Head, and Crux Fidelis. The bells of St. John Cantius rang out for the Chicago Blackhawks' championship in 2015 and the Cubs' World Series victory in 2016.

Sacred Music from Renaissance to Viennese

The parish's program of sacred liturgical music is recognized locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, and no parish funds are used to support it. Annual costs run around one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, sustained by the Patrons of Sacred Music, an annual five-hundred-dollar giving society that includes reserved seating at major liturgical celebrations. The program's annual budget is underwritten by the AMDG Foundation, an apostolate of the Canons Regular dedicated to Catholic fine arts and sacred music.

Mass settings range from Gregorian chant to Renaissance polyphony to Viennese classical choral works. On most Sundays, the Schola Cantorum of St. Gregory the Great sings the Propers and Ordinaries in chant. The Resurrection Choir, directed by Fr. Phillips until his death in 2018 and now led by Director of Liturgical Music Massimo Scapin, sings Ordinaries in Viennese classical settings on the second Sunday of each month. The St. Cecilia Choir presents polyphonic settings on greater feasts, and the Cantate Domino Choir and Magnificat Choir round out the adult ensembles. Distinguished past celebrants of these Masses have included Raymond Cardinal Burke, Francis Cardinal Arinze, Fr. George Rutler, Fr. John Hardon, S.J., and Bishop Thomas Paprocki.

Massimo Scapin holds diplomas in piano and choral conducting from the State Conservatory of Music in Perugia, Fellowship diplomas in orchestral conducting and composition from the National College of Music in London, and the baccalaureate in religious sciences magna cum laude from the Pontifical Lateran University. From Christmas 1999 to 2010 he served as Assistant Music Director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, and on commission from the Office of Papal Liturgical Celebrations he composed and conducted music for Pope St. John Paul II's Jubilee of Sports People Mass at Rome's Olympic Stadium during the Great Jubilee of 2000. He became director of music at the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2013 and Resident Composer for the Sistine Chapel Choir in 2019.

The organist, Dr. Corrado Cavalli, DMA, a native of Turin, holds Master's degrees in organ and choral conducting from the Conservatorio Statale di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Turin and a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Illinois. He has performed in the cathedrals of Paris, Berlin, London, and Dublin, and has collaborated with the Italian National Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble Orchestral des Alpes et de la Mer, the Turin Philharmonic, and the chamber choir of the Turin Conservatory. Jonathan Esser, a junior at Loyola University Chicago pursuing degrees in Liturgical Music and Philosophy, serves as the program's intern.

For younger singers, the parish runs a graded choir system beginning with the Holy Innocents Choir for children as young as six, progressing through the St. Nicholas and St. Hildegard Choir for intermediate students, and culminating in the Magnificat Choir for high schoolers performing works by Palestrina, Victoria, and Bartolucci.

Our Lady of Chicago

The icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa venerated at St. John Cantius has been called Our Lady of Chicago since 1997, when Pope St. John Paul II, meeting Fr. Phillips and a parish delegation in his private study after blessing new crowns fashioned by a local goldsmith from donated jewelry, turned at the door and proclaimed Matka Boska z Chicago, Our Lady of Chicago. The parish had rededicated itself to the Blessed Mother for the approaching third millennium, and on September 15, 1997, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the parish celebrated a solemn re-coronation of the icon to unveil the papal crowns. The icon itself had been brought from Poland in the early twentieth century by Fr. Barzyński for use at St. Stanislaus Kostka and was later drawn by lot from a raffle organized by the women of St. John Cantius, who refused to give it back.

After each Sunday Mass the faithful process to the icon to ask for her intercession, and on Marian feasts the altar is decorated with flowers. On Sundays and holy days the Canons Regular close their Night Prayer by processing solemnly to the icon, chanting a hymn in her honor beneath the crowns blessed by the Holy Father. In August 2016, thousands marched down Chicago Avenue behind the International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima, one of two statues sculpted in 1947 under the direction of Sister Lucia, and a year later the parish organized a centennial observance of the apparitions at Fatima with a series of evening Masses and candlelight processions to neighboring churches, culminating in a Pontifical High Mass and solemn crowning of the statue on October 13, 2017.

Sacraments, Weddings, and the Last Rites

The seven sacraments structure parish life. Baptisms are arranged in advance through the parish office, and the parish encourages families to present infants soon after birth. Children prepare for First Communion through Sunday-morning CCD classes, while adults enter the OCIA process, the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, led by Br. Nathaniel of the Canons Regular, with stages including Inquiry, the Catechumenate, Purification and Enlightenment, and the reception of the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil. Confirmation is typically conferred by the bishop and is offered both to parish youth through CCD and to adults through OCIA. The Anointing of the Sick is administered by priests whose olive oil has been blessed by the Archbishop of Chicago at the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday at Holy Name Cathedral, and parishioners are urged to call the parish office in any serious illness so the priest can bring Confession, Viaticum, and the Apostolic Blessing.

Weddings at St. John Cantius are celebrated with great solemnity and require six months to a year of preparation, including Pre-Cana classes, witness affidavits, a canonical questionnaire, and monthly meetings with a priest or deacon. A civil marriage license from Cook County is required, obtained no more than sixty days and no less than twenty-four hours before the ceremony. The parish fee is fifteen hundred dollars, with a five-hundred-dollar deposit to hold the date and the balance due before the rehearsal. Weddings are typically scheduled on Saturday mornings or early afternoons, not on Fridays or Sundays, and not during Advent or Lent. Bridal attire should reflect the sacredness of the occasion: shoulders covered, modest neckline and back, and the bride's bouquet is traditionally presented to the Virgin Mary at her altar after Communion. The parish music director selects and approves all music, and no secular or popular show music is permitted. A maximum of five couples, excluding the best man and maid of honor, may stand in the wedding procession, and no young children are permitted in it. A number of traditional customs are encouraged, including the Lasso Ceremony, the Arras coins, the Marriage Crucifix, the Enthronement of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts in the new home, and the Rite of Betrothal for couples preparing for marriage.

Parish organizations support this sacramental life. Prayer groups include the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the Lay Association of St. John Cantius, the Rosary Prayer Group, the Padre Pio Prayer Group, the St. Monica Sodality, and the St. Joseph Men's Prayer Guild. Outreach and life issues are led by the Crusaders for Life, the Respect Life Committee, and St. Paul Street Evangelization. Service groups include Café San Giovanni, the Ushers, Cook for the Canons, and Adam's Garden Guild. Men's groups include the Knights of Columbus. Youth life is built around the Altar Servers, Sisters to Saints, the youth choirs, Youth Activities, and Crusaders for Life. The Catholic Art Institute, the choirs and orchestras, St. Martha's Guild, and St. Dominic's Rosary Ministry form the Sacred Arts cluster. Peter & Paul Young Adults gather the parish's college-aged and early-career members.

Classes for Mind and Soul

St. John Cantius has long offered an unusually broad program of intellectual formation in the Catholic faith. The parish's CCD religious education program prepares children for the sacraments and the parish school building, now leased to the Chicago Academy of the Arts, hosts some parish meetings. Adult formation centers on the OCIA, language classes, and a History and Culture series that meets during Lent and other seasons to study topics such as the Holy Week liturgy and papal encyclicals.

The parish's language program offers graded instruction in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, with beginner through advanced reading classes meeting weekly online or in the parish's Academy of the Arts building. Latin I, a beginner course using Collins' Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, is taught by Rachel Chinchilla on Sunday afternoons. Latin II, a reading-fluency class conducted entirely in Spoken Latin, is taught by Richard Rodriguez on Saturday mornings using Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata. Latin III, an introduction to the Latin text of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica with attention to his Five Proofs for the Existence of God, is taught by Christopher Jones on Sunday mornings as a hybrid in-person and remote class. A recorded introductory Latin course and a recorded introductory Hebrew course are also available for self-paced study. Greek classes cover spoken Ancient Greek with reading-grammar drills and a reading class on the Wisdom of Solomon.

Classes are supported by Biretta Books, the parish's affiliated Catholic bookstore, which carries textbooks, the Latin Mass Companion, and other devotional and catechetical resources. The parish also runs Virtus child-protection classes for adults working with children. Most classes cost fifty dollars per semester, with payment accepted through the parish's online registration system.

Parish Life and the Annual Rhythm

Parishioner life moves through a rich annual cycle. Forty Hours Devotion opens each year with three days of Eucharistic exposition. Ember Days are observed in their traditional quarterly rhythm. The Solemnity of the Dedication of the Church, celebrated on the feast of St. John Cantius, October 20, anchors the autumn calendar, and the parish continues to mark the Michaelmas Blue Mass and the annual benefit dinner of the Canons Regular each fall. In May 2023, the parish hosted the inauguration of the first American district of the Polish Brotherhood of the Rooster and the Investiture of the Knightly Order of St. John Cantius, one of five Knightly Orders within the Bractwo Kurkowe, with Bishop Andrew Wypych, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, presiding. The following summer, the Canons Regular traveled to Kraków to celebrate the silver jubilee of their founding at the tomb of St. John Cantius and at the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa.

The parish welcomes new parishioners through periodic New Parishioner Orientation Meetings held in the parish hall and offers ongoing support to its members through the volunteer network and the Lay Association of St. John Cantius. Online Sunday giving and specific funds for the parish, the Canons Regular, the Cantian Fund (for restoration and maintenance), the Sacred Music Program, the AMDG Foundation, the café, candles, the digital broadcast fund, youth programs, and flowers and gardens are all available. Bequests may be arranged through a free online will-writing tool.

The cornerstone inscription still reads Awesome is this place. It is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. More than a century after Polish immigrants built the church in the hope that God would provide, the parish remains a singular expression of Catholic tradition in Chicago, sustained by a religious community dedicated to the proposition that nothing sacred is ever truly lost.