Most Sundays after Mass at Aurora’s St. George Byzantine Catholic Church, parishioners June Todas and Rose Cinto head to the church’s basement to have brunch and also count money from the offering.
Todas is in the process of training another parishioner to take over the accounting job that she has done for the church for the last 26 years after spending other years cooking for one of the parish’s several fundraisers each year.
Be it the Romanian nut roll known as Kifla, Romanian stuffed cabbage, or Romanian sausage which will be sold at this weekend’s fundraiser, parishioner Nellie Smith has spent many hours in the kitchen of the church’s adjacent St. George Citizens Club alongside other parish members utilizing “old Romanian recipes.”
Smith even schedules her trips to Naples, Florida, to visit her daughters and their families around the church’s fundraisers.
While there, she doesn’t stop cooking. She continues to make the traditional Romanian dishes for her family in Florida.
Founded in 1935, St. George Byzantine Catholic Church is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Of the 14 parishes of the Catholic Churches Byzantine Rite in the United States, two are located in Aurora.
During the 1930s, a large Romanian population existed in the Pigeon Hill neighborhood of Aurora, Smith said. At that time, church membership reached about 500 members, mostly of Romanian descent.
Smith’s father and two brothers helped dig the basement for St. George’s Church.
For several decades, liturgies were held in a basement church while the parish raised funds for completing the upper portion of the building. The upper church was dedicated in 1966.
Many of church’s 135 families do not speak Romanian. Therefore, today’s Masses are conducted in English and only conducted in Romanian on holy days, Smith said.
When the church members do sing hymns in Romanian she said, “It is beautiful. I will stop singing just so I can listen. Tears come down my cheeks.”
When Smith attended the church, she said, “We were one close family — everyone went to everyone else’s wedding and everyone’s funeral.”
In the past, parishioners were divided with men sitting on one side and women sitting on the other. Children sat in the front, followed by older children, and then teenagers, she said. Today, Smith still sits in the pew that her mother sat in when she attended the church.
Andy Silagyi of Bristol, whose grandfather was one of the founders of St. George Church, said his daughter, Megan, is getting married in the church on Saturday.
“My parents got married in the basement and my wife and I got married upstairs,” he said. “There is a lot of history in this building.”
More Top Picks Best Electric Lift Chairs And Recliners
Silagyi runs the turkey raffle for the church and also helps out with the sausage making.
Traditionally, making the Romanian sausage had begun with the men of the church butchering the animal and the women mixing the sausage.
“Now the women wash the casing for the sausage and the men do the mixing,” Smith said.
“We have very generous and kindhearted volunteers who help out in many different ways from caring for the ground and building, financial aspects, Sunday school, and helping with the fundraisers,” the Rev. Frederick Peterson said.
Cathy Janek is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News