Every age has its martyrs, heroes and reformers, men who take their proper places and maintain against all odds the great principles in whose defense or upholding they are enlisted. These men not only make for themselves a place in history but in the vital affairs of their day and generation they also play an important part unrecorded on written page, touching and winning the great pulsing heart of humanity. Their worth and goodness are not always recognized. It is often decades and sometimes centuries, before the world awakes to the fact that a hero had stepped into the arena and grappled with some great evil or force which has menaced the wellbeing of humanity. When Martin Luther inaugurated his great work of reformation he met all of opposition and endured all of danger and obloquy for the sake of his faith, and not until he had long been gathered to his fathers did the full force of his labors, example and inspiration come to fruition. All along down the ages great minds have been at work with this idea in view, more liberty of thought, more freedom of will, more love to God, more justice to man. They have been leading men out of darkness into the light; out of chaos into order and harmony; out of the mystical and esoteric into the open day of clear thought. Such a man as this is Bishop Hodur, who was for six years a worker in the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, and who was chosen by a number of his countrymen and members of said church to be their standard bearer in a victorious and untrammeled march to greater light and better things.
In March, 1897, there was presented to Father Hodur, who was at that time pastor of Holy Trinity Church, Roman Catholic, at Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, a petition signed by two hundred and thirty-seven members of his denomination from Scranton and other places, importuning and urging him to head their cause, to withdraw from the church of Rome and to organize an independent Catholic Church. This movement culminated in the organization of what is now known as the Polish National Church, and the attitude which Bishop Hodur assumed in replying to the petition mentioned is indicated in the position which he now holds. The church has come forward with a definite aim, and among its most important functions are the spreading of a spirit of love and fraternity in each Christian community and the aiding of the Polish people to become more democratic, or more American, in their church and civic relations and personality. The Polish National Church believes that the laity should have equal representation in the government of the church. The highest power or authority in the church is vested in the synod, instead of the pope, and the synod convenes every five years, while a special session may be called by the bishop on request of one-third of the membership. This synod is composed of an equal number of laymen and clergy and is presided over by the bishop, who is elected by the body. The bishop will have control and supervision of the priests, parochial schools and church societies. The question of the celibacy of the priesthood has been taken up and the abolition of the ordinance is altogether probable, while the liturgy of the church will be changed from the Latin to the Polish language. It is expected that a cathedral will be erected in Scranton in the near future, while the establishing of a seminary at South Scranton has been undertaken, while an orphan asylum or home is in process of erection at the time of this writing. Bishop Hodur is a man of marked initiative and executive ability, and the church and synod made an excellent choice in calling him to his present high office for the temporal and spiritual affairs of the church are certain to be forwarded and vitalized through his apostolic and administrative control. The bishop has the right mettle and temperament to head so important a reformatory movement as that with which he has identified himself, and personal sacrifice and labor cannot be to him too great if the good of the world and work can be advanced through his efforts. Under his effective dispensation the work of the organization has gone steadily forward, the membership having been augmented from the original two hundred and thirty-seven members until there are now represented twenty-four hundred and fifty families and two thousand and twenty single members. The church has the one bishop and twelve priests, and Pennsylvania has six churches, Massachusetts four, New Jersey two and the city of Baltimore one.
Bishop Hodur was born in Zarki, Poland, 1 Apr 1866, and was educated in the Roman Catholic seminary and college in the city of Cracow, Poland, having been graduated in the institution in 1892, and having been ordained to the priesthood in the following year. In 1893 he immigrated to America and located in Scranton. Here Bishop O'Hara appointed him assistant to Father Aust, rector of the Polish Roman Catholic Church in South Scranton. In 1894 he was given charge of a church in Green Ridge, a suburb of Scranton, and in the following year became rector of Holy Trinity Church, in Nanticoke, where he remained until he identified himself with the new church and movement, as has already been noted. He is a son of John and Mary Hodur, who still remain in Poland, as do all of their five children except the bishop, who is the only representative of the family in America.