The Church of St. Saviour was founded in 1905, but at first, it didn’t look like how it looks now.
As the population in Park Slope grew in the early 19-hundreds and the farmlands made way for brownstones, the little church on the corner had to grow too.
You can see the stonework on the lower part of the church is different from the bricks above because St. Saviour was built in two stages. The upper church was completed in 1918, but there were several challenges, thanks to World War One.
The pastor, Father Frank Spacek, tells us they’re unique in depicting the Stations of the Cross. The lower windows show the Mysteries of the Rosary.
“Even on the day that the Bishop dedicated the church, the upper church, everything wasn’t here yet,” Father Spacek said. “The stained glass windows were still in Munich, Germany. The marble was still in Italy.”
“They always say that the stained glass windows were the Bibles of the poor and for people who 100-150 years ago didn’t know how to read,” Father Spacek said. “They could come to a church and look at those windows and see the story of our salvation in the Stations of the Cross, or they could pray the Mysteries of the Rosary.”
While the windows remain, the parishioners who view them have changed. They were primarily Italian and Irish back then; Father Spacek says the whole world is here now.
All ethnicities and nationalities at the church are living their Catholic faith and putting it into action.
Parishioners like Dave Beaudry, who leads the Brownbaggers, the ministry that gathers once a month to make sandwiches, pack them up with some other goodies, then hop on the subway and deliver them to the homeless.
“The way I’ve always felt about this is putting Jesus’s words into action, and it was an opportunity to go out and help members of our community,” Beaudry said.
Beaudry and his volunteers, including his wife and two sons, walk through the subways and city streets to find people often overlooked by others.
“Just the experience and making the connection with, unfortunately, people who don’t get seen very often,” Beaudry said. “I think it really touched us to just reach out to them and see them and talk to them.”
He says this monthly mission has made him a better person, brought him closer to his church community, and helped grow his faith.
“My faith in God but also, I think the community aspect of it, I felt that from an early age- how God speaks with you through different people,” Beaudry said. “It’s been a part of me- feeling God reaching out to you in different ways and doing different things, and this has been just the latest in a journey of that.”