Stone and copper building in Falcon Heights holds storied Catholic history

Editor’s note: “Echoes of Catholic Minnesota” is a new regular column from local historian and Catholic Reba Luiken.

At the corner of Buford and Cleveland in Falcon Heights stands a stone and copper building. The copper is new, but the stone structure that faces the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota was built in 1940 in anticipation of one of the crowning events in the history of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The modest building was home to Corpus Christi parish, which was formed to serve a growing suburban neighborhood and to play host to the Ninth National Eucharistic Congress in 1941.

The Congress itself was centered a few blocks away at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, where 475,000 Catholics gathered over the course of four days in June to honor Christ the King in the Eucharist. In a word, the celebration was grand. The papal colors of white and gold adorned thousands of banners across the Twin Cities and clothes of hundreds of ushers, school children and altar servers who participated in the festivities. The grandstand was prepared with seats for over 100,000 worshipers at Masses, and the baldachin canopy over the altar was an impressive five-story structure that was topped with a nine-foot-tall monstrance replica. National newspaper coverage highlighted the Congress’ opening and closing processions.

On the final day, over 80,000 Catholics processed through Como Park in the rain, adoring the Eucharist on an altar of flowers after hearing directly from the pope in Vatican City via radio. The governor even declared a state holiday, and all milkmen in St. Paul finished their routes by noon in preparation.

The National Eucharistic Congress was part of an international Liturgical Movement in the first half of the 20th century that highlighted the importance of lay involvement in the liturgy. Laypeople sought to participate in the Mass and worship collectively as part of the mystical body of Christ. This theology was present during all Congress events, but 100,000 men passing a flame at midnight Mass to symbolize the spread of the faith was an especially moving display.

Lectures and homilies at the Congress also reflected the Liturgical Movement’s focus on social action. Multiple bishops spoke in favor of organized labor and in support of African Americans. The official theme of the Congress was the emulation of the sacrifice of Christ, and this was also an integral part of the broader Liturgical Movement. Adoration of the eucharist was central to both, and this devotion was intended to inspire social transformation though the work of devoted Catholics.

Of course, the Congress was just four days in the history of Corpus Christi parish. Later, as the parish grew, it purchased land in Roseville and opened a school there in 1959, becoming a parish in two places. In 1992, a new church was built at the Roseville location and the building in Falcon Heights was sold to the Korean parishioners of St. Andrew Kim. Since 2010, the building at Buford and Cleveland Avenues has been part of the Emily Program, a residential eating disorder treatment center, making the old Corpus Christi Church just one of many pieces of Catholic history hiding across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, just waiting to be uncovered.

Luiken is a historian with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a lifelong Catholic in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.