Mass will remember JPII's 1987 Hamtramck visit
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published August 31, 2007
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Pope John Paul II speaks on the Hamtramck stop of his 1987 visit to metro Detroit, with Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, then archbishop of Detroit, at right. |
Detroit – Fr. Ted Blaszczyk says he has "many fond memories" of the 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II to Hamtramck, although it was "a very busy day" for him.
As coordinator for the Hamtramck portion of the late pontiff's visit to Detroit, Fr. Blaszczyk had many things to do making sure everything went smoothly.
Now the 20th anniversary of that visit will be commemorated at a special 7 p.m. Mass on Wednesday, Sept. 19, at St. Florian Church, 2626 Poland, one block north of Holbrook.
The Priests Conference for Polish Affairs of the Archdiocese of Detroit is hoping to fill St. Florian for the anniversary Mass. "We recall with joy his visit," says Msgr. Stanley Milewski, president of the conference.
The Sept. 18, 1987 procession down Joseph Campau Avenue in the "popemobile" and the subsequent rally at a site south of Holbrook Avenue was a tremendous event in the history of the small city that is surrounded on three sides by Detroit, says Fr. Blaszczyk, who was in those days pastor of Our Lady Queen of Apostles in Hamtramck.
"It made the people of Hamtramck feel very special," he recalls.
And Fr. Blaszczyk, now a senior priest of the archdiocese, considers the papal visit as one of three highlights of his priesthood, the others being the two occasions he had to concelebrate Mass with the Holy Father in his private chapel at the Vatican in 1989.
During his two days in the Detroit area, Pope John Paul visited Sacred Heart Major Seminary, the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Detroit's Hart Plaza, as well as celebrating Mass at the Silverdome in Pontiac.
But the Hamtramck stop was an opportunity for the first Polish pope to connect with Detroit's Polish-American community at a time when Hamtramck was largely a Polish enclave.
The pope spoke in English, Polish and Ukrainian, congratulating Hamtramck's then-sizeable Ukrainian-American community on the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity in their homeland.
"He seemed to enjoy himself. He was smiling and shaking hands with everybody," Fr. Blaszczyk remembers.
Msgr. Walter Ziemba, who served as an on-air expert commentator for WJBK-TV (Channel 2) during the entire Detroit-area papal visit, will be the homilist at the Sept. 19 Mass.
As the first-ever visit to Detroit by a pope, the 1987 event was of major importance to the Catholics of southeast Michigan, but non-Catholics were also impressed, Msgr. Ziemba recalls.
Although it was Pope John Paul's first visit to Detroit as pope, he had been here twice before when he was still Cardinal Karol Woytyla, archbishop of Krakow. And Msgr. Ziemba had hosted him at the Orchard Lake Schools those times.
Msgr. Ziemba also saw the pope regularly during his pontificate in connection with his duties on the board of the Rome-based Pope John Paul II Foundation.
He also did the English translation of Pope John Paul's book, "Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way" (Doubleday, 2004) and was author of "John Paul II – Reflections on the Man" (Paulist Press, 2005).
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