Catholic Transcript Online

"We were seeking to upgrade the parish center chapel," said Lillian Benesevich, a trustee of the parish. A former convent and later a site for St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing, the parish center building has recently returned to parish use. Built in 1962, the center sits behind the brick church on Congress Avenue in what is known as the Brooklyn section of town.

But, as they were preparing the chapel for use, someone noticed that the Stations of the Cross were missing.

"We searched high and low. Wherever they are, they are," she said. "I said, gee, maybe we could find someone Lithuanian to create replacements for us."

She contacted her brother Richard, who teaches English in Poland and has contacts in Lithuania, which borders Poland to the northeast. "He called someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew the artist," she said.

Richard visited Connecticut during the Christmas season. "I travel to Lithuania quite regularly, and I know people in the arts," he said while walking through the parish center and church. "And, there was money, in effect a grant, a bequest from Edith Dumschott, a deceased parishioner of St. Joe’s. And we thought maybe it would be nice for a Lithuanian parish to have a Lithuanian artist do something."

He sent an e-mail to a friend, who put the word out. Within days, the artist appeared.

"The artist’s name is Kazys Venclovas [KAH-zhis Ven-SLO-vas]," Richard said. "He lives in Vilnius [Lithuania’s capital]. He teaches art at an art academy called Justinas Vienozínskas Art Institute, which is a well-known secondary school."

Richard said that Mr. Venclovas works in wood, stone, steel and other materials. "He even uses a modern technology of laser-cutting stone," he said.

Lillian said, "Richard sent us some pictures of Venclovas’s other works, and we said, ‘Gee, that looks really good.’ And we got a really good price."

She said the artist understood that the Stations needed to be 15 by 20 inches or bigger, and so he created one and sent a photo of it, asking, "Is this what you were looking for?"

Lillian said that she was astounded by its beauty. She gave him the go-ahead in October 2007. By May 2008, he was finished, and the wood-carved Stations arrived in crates in time to be dedicated that September.

"These are not just stamped out from a mold," Lillian said. "These are hand-carved, one-of-a-kind, fitted like a jigsaw puzzle, Lithuanian wayside cross sculptures. He designed them all."

Richard said, "They’re very much in what you could call the folk style of Lithuania. The proportions are not meant to be realistic. I think some people in the parish wanted something more realistic, but it’s not. It’s folk art. I wasn’t here for the dedication, but the people from the parish who spoke to me personally really liked it."

Reaction was so positive, he said, that he and Lillian decided to commission the artist for a second project – and pay for it themselves in memory of their father, Joseph Benesevich, who died in 1982.

"We have a cross that we use for Lenten services, an empty cross," Lillian said. They asked Mr. Venclovas to create a corpus for the cross, and they provided the dimensions. It arrived in time for dedication on June 14, 2009, the Feast of Corpus Christi, at a side altar of the main church.

In a booklet printed for that occasion, Richard wrote: "Lithuanians have survived as a nation because they have been able to maintain contact with the essence of what has made them distinct and individual. After their language, once derided as a vanishing peasant vernacular and now recognized as being one of the oldest spoken human tongues, these crosses and carvings have become iconic representations of [Lithuanians’] endurance and spirit."

St. Joseph Parish was established in 1894, when Bishop Michael A. Tierney appointed Father Joseph Zebris as pastor in response to petitions on his behalf from local Lithuanians. The first wooden church on the corner of James (now Congress Avenue) and John streets was replaced in 1904 by the present brick structure.

According to the archdiocesan Web site, www.archdioceseofhartford.org, the parish is the first Lithuanian worshiping community in Connecticut. In a 1980 biography of Father Zebris, Lithuanian Pioneer Priest of New England, Father William Wolkovich-Valkavicius writes that the parish was "the first [Lithuanian] parish in New England."

Sister of Mercy Dolores Liptak, in her 1999 episcopal history Hartford’s Catholic Legacy: Leadership, writes: "It can even be argued that St. Joseph was the first canonically and civilly incorporated Lithuanian parish founded in the combined New England, New York, and New Jersey areas."

Lillian Benesevich pointed out that with the October 2009 closing of St. George Parish in Cleveland, Ohio, St. Joseph Parish may now be the oldest surviving Lithuanian parish in the United States.