Since it's closing St. Adalbert Church has been a refuge for the houseless, but not everyone is happy about it. | ✍️_KellyGarcia__👇
Left to right: Juan Fuentes, Alberto Martinez, and Xavier have lived on St. Adalbert’s steps for months.On the shuttered doors of St. Adalbert Church in Pilsen is a portrait of the Virgin Mary, peeking through bright green, white, and red silk curtains that together make the Mexican flag. She stands in her familiar posture: hands in prayer, head bowed. A small lantern sits at her feet in front of a bouquet of fresh roses.
“She takes care of us,” Juan Fuentes told me in Spanish, gesturing to the painting of La Virgen. The 55-year-old with a salt-and-pepper mustache has lived in Pilsen for most of his life, finding jobs where he can as a truck driver. Alberto Martinez, who works as a roofer, sat next to him wearing layers of winter jackets, staring at the fire. A third man, Xavier, wrapped in a scarf with only his eyes and nose poking out, added paper to the fire.
“Go back to Polonia!” replied Fuentes, in English. “I’m from Mexico!” Ruiz told me the parishioners were worried the fire was too close to the marble floors outside of the church. But the men insisted the floor was noncombustible because it was actually concrete. Besides, they said, they needed the fire to stay warm. The woman in the puffer jacket insisted they leave.“That’s what we want to know too,” Ruiz told me. “It’s the city and the Archdiocese’s job of helping the poor.
“You’re always going to want to cherish memories of your first home,” she told me. “It makes you want to come back every day and we have.” A spokesperson for the Archdiocese declined to comment on the document but said “the church is still for sale” to whoever can put it to good use for the community and honor its history.
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