Poles are noted in the Lemont area as early as 1860 working in the local quarries.
SS. Cyril and Methodius parish was founded in 1884 as a Polish parish. The surrounding area was called
Jasna Góra, in reverence to the shrine of the
Black Madonna in Poland. The parish offers mass in both Polish and English and is currently home to 1,965 families.
Architecture
The church was designed by
Erhard Brielmaier, and sons, who are most well known for their design of the magnificent
St. Josaphat Basilica in
Milwaukee as well as the now closed parish of St. Salomea in Roseland. The
Romanesque style edifice was completed in 1929, replacing a former church that burned down in 1928. Some of the church's highlights are the beautiful original
rose window, the new entryway, and the church's
steeple which is the highest elevation in all of
Cook County, Illinois.
Patron saints
Cyril and Methodius were brothers born of
Macedonian nobility, who became priests in
Constantinople. They evangelized to the
Slavic peoples, translated the liturgy into
Slavonic and made numerous converts. They are also credited with devising and spreading the
Glagolitic alphabet, which was used for Slavonic manuscripts before the development of the
Cyrillic, the alphabet derived from Glagolitic, that, with small modifications, is still used in a number of
Slavic languages. Both brothers were
canonized in The Eastern Orthodox Church as "
equal-to-apostles". In the
Roman Catholic Church they are also jointly revered as Apostles to the Slavs and their cult was further glorified in 1980 when
Pope John Paul II declared them the
patron saints of Europe.