Michael Jordan is the king of Chicago’s West Side, no question.
But the queen?
My vote goes to Our Lady of Pompeii.
M.J. arrived in 1984, started a basketball dynasty, helped build the United Center and lit a fire under one of the great urban revivals of all time.
O.L.P. arrived in 1910 and, through bad times and good, went absolutely nowhere. The old church and the people who love her will not be budged from 1220 W. Lexington St., just west of Racine Avenue.
They are survivors, this royal couple. Skeptics said they were outmoded and past their prime. It was time to go, some said, yet they stayed. And now–now they are enormous magnets. He draws to his side all who crave excellence in sport. She opens her arms to those in search of spiritual renewal and reconnection to the old neighborhood.
You probably know a few things about Michael Jordan. Let me tell you a little about Our Lady of Pompeii.
It’s the oldest surviving Italian-American Catholic Church in Chicago, located a few blocks north of Taylor Street’s Little Italy. The first church built there was a modest-but-sturdy affair, not unlike the first wave of Italian immigrants who built it. The old building is still used for a community center.
But in building the second church, the one dedicated in 1924, no expense was spared. Hardwood floors. Carved oak confessionals. Tiers of stained glass windows depicting the great saints of Italy. Stunning oil-on-canvas religious paintings inlaid on vaulted plaster ceilings.
It is not St. Patrick’s Cathedral of New York or Notre Dame of Paris. But Our Lady of Pompeii was (and is) a statement in stone that this people–this hardy folk from the hill towns of south and central Italy–had staked their claim in Chicago and were moving up democracy’s ladder.
More Top Picks What Is Orton Gillingham And How Does It Help Dyslexia
Moving out, too.
After the second world war, young Italian-American couples with money in their pockets and kids to raise headed west to Maywood, Melrose Park, River Forest and Roselle. Then came the bulldozers. Nearly two-thirds of O.L.P.’s parishioners were condemned out of their homes to make way for the Eisenhower Expressway and the University of Illinois at Chicago. But a solid core remained, even as other ethnic parishes across the West Side succumbed to the racial changes and white flight of the ’60s and ’70s. Even now the old-timers brag that Pompeii was one of very few parishes on the West Side that always paid its own bills without help from the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
Maybe that’s why parishioners got mad when, in 1993, the archdiocese announced it would close Our Lady of Pompeii (by then in need of substantial repairs) as part of a general consolidation of inner-city parishes. This did not sit well with the loyal ones. Think of Michael Jordan being trash-talked by an opposing guard, score tied, a minute left on the clock.
So began the campaign to save Our Lady of Pompeii. An organization called Pompeii On The Move was formed by then-Ald. Ted Mazola, Joseph (Chrysler-Plymouth) Gentile and Oscar D’Angelo, a real estate consultant and, some say, the unofficial mayor of Little Italy. Florence “Flo” Scala, who led the unsuccessful fight against UIC, joined the cause, as did contributors such as Nick (Chevrolet-Cadillac) Celozzi and Italian-American civic leader Dominic DiFrisco.
Paula D’Angelo, Oscar’s wife and an experienced hospital administrator, took over as full-time coordinator of the campaign.
Not surprisingly, the archdiocese came around. After Pompeii On The Move raised $68,500 to rebuild the church’s unsafe bell tower, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin agreed to keep O.L.P. open–not as a parish, but as a self-supporting Catholic shrine. The Rev. John Wall, pastor of nearby Old St. Patrick’s, agreed to serve as rector and the Rev. Richard Fragomeni, a dynamic speaker and author, was recruited as spiritual director.
And so the old-timers keep coming (mass is at 7:30 a.m. weekdays, 8:30 and 11 a.m. Sundays) only now they are joined by singles and young couples who are snapping up the $350,000 row houses being rehabbed all over Little Italy. They come from the suburbs, too, for the special Italian feast days. There’s a speakers series during Lent, a St. Joseph’s Table in March, a concert by young opera singers in the spring and, in the summer, an all-day reunion picnic across the street in Arrigo Park.
“They come from all over,” said Paula D’Angelo, “and you hear the same things: `This is where I was baptized.’ `This is where my parents were married.’ `This is where my roots are.’ “
There’s even talk now of reopening the old parish school. The family of a prominent construction executive, the late Frank Vigilante, recently donated $1 million to get that ball rolling. The keepers of the shrine, meanwhile, are out to raise $1.5 million for restorative work such as replacing the rotting frames that hold the shrine’s priceless stained glass windows.
Want a window dedicated in your family’s name? Call 312-421-3757 and pledge $5,000.
After all, some Bulls fans paid that much and more last week to see Michael Jordan one last time. The king may or may not be back next year. The queen, God willing, will be there for a long, long time.