St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish

St. Stanislaus Kostka stands on Barton Street East, just east of Sherman Avenue, in the east end of the lower city; its parish office is at 8 St. Ann Street. The parish traces its roots to 1911, when Polish settlers arrived from Chicago to join the small Polish community already in Hamilton, who until then had heard Mass in Polish at nearby St. Ann’s Church. That May, Bishop Thomas Joseph Dowling agreed to a Polish parish and gave it land near St. Ann’s, and a first chapel was dedicated in May 1912.

The present church, a Romanesque building of brick and stone designed by the Hamilton firm of Wardell & Scott, had its cornerstone laid on 12 May 1919. Work stalled after the First World War, and Bishop John Thomas McNally blessed the finished church on 16 October 1927. Between 1952 and 1954 the artists Vincent Mundo and Anthony Amato of Buffalo painted its walls and ceiling with scenes from the history of Poland and its church, and the City’s heritage inventory records visits by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Kraków, later Pope John Paul II, in 1969 and 1976. The Congregation of the Resurrection served the parish from 1912 until June 2023, when the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate took it over, and in September 2025 the bishop approved the parish’s project to replace the church roof, for which it is raising funds.

The Saturday vigil Mass is at 5:00 p.m. in Polish. On Sunday, Masses are at 8:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. in Polish, with an English Mass at 9:30 a.m. Weekday Masses, in Polish, are at 6:30 p.m. from Tuesday to Friday and at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday.

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