A bit of the world came to Saint Casimir's

To-day was the first Sunday in Lent, a penitential season; but Sundays are always to be a celebration, and are not counted as one of the forty days, and parish life at St. Casimir was exceptionally non-ordinary. The Casmiri were celebrating two years since the decrees. 

They remembered several people and events, including the altar boy "Walter" who pulled the plug on the bishop during the Mass of Eviction. That was the spark that brought a scene similar to Casablanca  [click1,  click2] . After the invasion of Poland in 1939, he was a captured soldier and spent six years in the camps. Władysław Szylwian died February 2013, he had lived an hundred years and ten days. They remembered the days in the street, and the Mass of Homecoming. After Mass, there was a Benediction and the Gorzkie Żale (Bitter Lamentations) devotion. They sang in Latin, English, and Polish. 

  Monstrance and candles on high altar of St. Casimir Cleveland

Local television interviewing David Sutherland, a film producer for PBS Frontline. He came in from Boston (which has not always sent good émigrés to Cleveland). Two of his crew came in from Chicago. They are filming a documentary on immigration.

John Niedzialek, whose family has belonged to the parish an hundred years speaking on the history of the parish over the last five years. His was the first letter of appeal from the parish that reached the right desk in the right time frame in Rome. Even though the cause was just, and the action protested against was invalid and against canon law, without such a formal reception of such a letter as an object of appeal, the cause would have been lost. He has never mentioned that his was the first of two letters that reached such a desk in Rome from Saint Casimir's.

Joseph Feckanin speaks about the parish before introducing the first dancers. The Frontline fellow saw Joe speaking on film clips posted on the internet, and interviewed him. He has become the preferred de facto spokesman to the press. They don't ask who can they speak with, they head straight to Joe.

All sorts of electronic recording devices were used to 'film' the dancers. Some gadget hybridised from the original lines of Marconi, Bell, Edison, and others.