The "The Pretty Church In Hell" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Talking with a friend who at one time lived in a small town known as Shamokin which is to the north-west of our homes in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Would often talk about the "town that had been left to die".  The town's name was Centralia and about a thousand people once lived in the town.  It was settled in the 1840's when coal was king.  The jet-black, rock hard stuff was the most powerful fuel known at the time.  When it was discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania it triggered a rush of immigrant workers to the area.  Hungarians, Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians all found their way to the little mining town of Centralia looking for work in the coal mines.  Then in 1911 a Ukrainian Catholic Church was built in town.  The simple, wood frame church had hand-laid stone walls for the foundation.  A church just like a few others that dotted the landscape in the small town that also had a few corner stores, a barbershop, a few schools and a town hall.  And then one day the town caught on fire.  Date was May 27, 1962 when Centralia changed forever.  I had just graduated from high school and was working at the local Acme Market when I remember seeing stories about it on TV.  A fire was spreading from a local dump, where workers were burning trash, to a seam of coal that evidently ran all through and under the town of Centralia.  

Sign near the town of Centralia

More than $7 million was spent trying to stop the fire, but nothing worked.  What at one time was a single seam of coal that was burning turned into another seam and then another.  Slowly the earth began to heat up and hollow out.  Smoke belched from cracks in the ground.  Basement walls in some homes developed cracks in them with smoke and noxious fumes coming into the house.  Nothing could be done to stop the underground fire.  And then 19 years later, on Valentine's Day, the earth buckled in one home and exposed a mineshaft hundreds of feet down.  

One of just a few signs telling of Centralia.  The rest
have been removed as if the town no longer exists.

Now, how scary would that be!  The 12-year-old boy who was in the home at the time survived by grabbing a tree root before being pulled into the mineshaft.  Then in 1984 the state and federal officials began buying properties and ordered the town evacuated.  Streets were emptied and homes were leveled.  The Roman Catholic church in town was knocked down with the Methodist Church right behind it.  But, that little Ukrainian Catholic Church, known as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church,  still remained.  

The neat little Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary Chuch in Centralia.

Seems that the church sat on one of the massive slabs of sandstone that forms the backbone of the region's mountains.  The sandstone protected the church above it from the burning anthracite coal that sat below the rest of the town.  In 2010 Father Hutsko took over the church and found it in rough shape with a very depleted congregation.  But, these loyal members would drive miles every Sunday to worship in what my friend referred to as "The Pretty Church in Hell".  The parishioners tore down the nearby abandoned and crumbling rectory, fixed the roof of the church and its blue dome and added new siding.  Five years later the archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church visited America and visited the still-burning town.  He was amazed how the church had survived in the burning and depleted town and told the survival story from the Gospel of Matthew: "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."  

The interior of the small church filled during one
of the Pilgrimage services a year ago.

I recently pulled up photos of the church and was amazed at the beautiful exterior as well as the interior.  The archbishop was so moved that he established the site as an annual pilgrimage for the Ukrainian Catholics.  A framed letter on the church wall confirms the honor.  The first pilgrimage took place in August of 2016 with close to 600 visitors from all over the United States visiting.  

Father Hutsko, priest at the Church.

Father Hutsko had gone to seminary with someone from the parish and during visits to Centralia fell in love with the church.  Every year now in August another pilgrimage will take place in this "Pretty Church in Hell".  Centralia, who lost it Zip code and most of its residents, will not give up the ghost as long as this neat little church remains.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - As of today the fire still continues to burn!