How Great This Art

In a county already world famous for it’s painted churches, this is a new chapter of illuminating faith through art – but this one includes a side of recycling.

The new Hostyn Catholic Church is in the very early stages of being rebuilt (the concrete slab is set to be poured any day now).

But one of the most iconic parts of the new church is already squared away.

When parishioners were planning how to rebuild their church, which was destroyed by a gas explosion on June 9, 2022, one big focus was to pay tribute to the church’s name – Queen of the Holy Rosary, in a special way.

There are 20 Mysteries of the Rosary, prayed by Catholics – five each of the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries. The rosary is recited before every weekend Mass at Hostyn, and regularly at many Catholic churches around the world.

Initial ideas involved having 20 stained glass windows made for the new church, each one dedicated to one of the 20 rosary mysteries. That would have been impressive enough. But as church members talked to various stained glass companies, one stood out – Cavallini Stained Glass Studio in San Antonio. They had an even grander option.

Cavallini already had in storage a bunch of rosary mystery stained glass windows they had acquired from St. Mary’s Church in Port Arthur. The windows had been put in that the church when it was built in 1922.

The windows are made in a Meyer Munich style, a distinctive 19th-century stainedglass art form from Munich, Germany, characterized by realistic depictions of religious scenes with depth (perspective) and rich color, mimicking Renaissance frescoes.

But after Hurricane Rita hit Port Arthur in 2005, St. Mary’s Church received extensive damage. Church members there held Mass in a church hall for a while before in April 2006 the church (the city’s oldest Catholic Church) was closed and merged with Sacred Heart in Port Arthur.

But the windows were saved. Those historic windows (15 feet wide) were much larger than could be used in the new Hostyn Church, which was looking for windows about four feet by eight feet for each mystery.

“It just worked out perfectly where the most complex, the most meaningful parts of each window will be reusable,” said Adrian V. Cavallini the Vice President of The Cavallini Co. as he attended the groundbreaking for the new Hostyn Church several weeks ago.

Meanwhile much of the rest of the original Port Arthur windows that are not being used for the mystery windows (colorful squares of glass), are being reused on the new Hostyn Church on a series of 20 upper level nave windows in colorful patchwork-style patterns.

Fifteen of the mysteries are pretty straight forward, but doing windows for the five Luminous Mysterious (which were just added to the Catholic Rosary in 2002, 80 years after the Port Arthur windows were made, has required some creativity and a couple of newly made windows). In addition to resizing things, the 100-yearold windows are undergoing a full restoration.

“We take them, we do a carbon copy rubbing, number each piece identically to the rubbing to the panel, separate all the materials, and then we’re rebuilding it essentially with the existing glass but with new materials so it’ll last – basically like getting new windows but with the old art and the cost savings. I’d say probably saving easily around $200,000,” Cavallini said.

This stained glass project in the new church was not cheap (and there’s lots of other impressive windows, from a 10-foot wide circular rose window to ornate windows on the side chapel and narthex), but members of the Hostyn rebuilding committee hoped much of the expense could be offset with parishioners sponsoring each window – with some very hefty suggested price tags.

But, amazingly, all have already been financially spoken for.

“It’s sort of a nice story where you think about this old church that’s condemned (in Port Arthur). They are basically saying it’s no longer worth fixing, worth putting the money in to fix, and we’re giving these windows a new home in another church that had this horrible situation,” Cavallini said. “It’s just sort of full circle.”