Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus

The Joliet area was first evangelized in 1838 by Father John Plunkett, who arrived in the fall of that year to minister to canal workers suffering from a malaria epidemic. St. Patrick's Church, established the same year, served the first Catholic settlers. The city of Joliet itself was incorporated in 1852 and named after the French explorer Louis Jolliet, whose 1673 expedition with Father Jacques Marquette passed through the Des Plaines River Valley. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Catholic immigrants from Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Ireland, and Hungary had flooded into Joliet's booming industrial economy, and by 1917 St. Patrick's parish was overwhelmed. On June 28, 1917, Archbishop George Mundelein of the Archdiocese of Chicago formally established St. Raymond Nonnatus as a new parish — the twelfth Catholic parish in Joliet — carved out of St. Patrick's territory. The following day, the Rev. Francis Scanlan, an assistant pastor at Holy Cross Parish in Chicago, was assigned as St. Raymond's first pastor. Father Scanlan initially celebrated Sunday Mass in the Motherhouse chapel of the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate on Plainfield Road (now the University of St. Francis) while the first church was being built. Ground was broken in November 1917 for a complex at 705 Douglas Street designed by Joliet architect Charles Wallace (who also designed St. Patrick's, St. Mary Nativity, and McKinley School). The cornerstone was laid on April 28, 1918, and a budget of $100,000 covered the church, school, and rectory. The Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate opened St. Raymond School in September 1918 with an initial enrollment of 178 (one source gives 190) children. The first Mass in the new Douglas Street church was celebrated on December 8, 1918 — the Feast of the Immaculate Conception — and by Christmas 1919 the full parish complex was complete. In 1937 Father Scanlan purchased a 12-room duplex at Douglas and Walsh Streets to serve as a convent for the Franciscan nuns. Father Scanlan died of heart failure on July 30, 1941, and was succeeded by the Rev. Edwin V. Hoover as second pastor; the United States entered World War II shortly thereafter with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Following World War II, the postwar baby boom created explosive demand for housing, services, and worship across the seven-county region. On December 11, 1948, Pope Pius XII erected the Diocese of Joliet from territory taken from the Archdiocese of Chicago and the dioceses of Peoria and Rockford, encompassing DuPage, Ford, Grundy, Iroquois, Kankakee, Kendall, and Will Counties. Father (later Bishop) Martin D. McNamara was named the first Bishop of Joliet and selected St. Raymond's as the new diocese's cathedral — a 'cathedra,' Latin for chair, the seat of the diocesan bishop. Because the original 540-seat Douglas Street church was too small to host diocesan liturgies, in 1950 McNamara launched a $2,000,000 fund drive across the 72 parishes of the new diocese to build a fitting cathedral. Architectural plans were drawn up by the Chicago firm of McCarthy and Smith, and the Mazzucco Construction Company of Joliet was chosen as general contractor. Bishop McNamara dictated exacting requirements: no steps from sidewalk to entrances, numerous and ample exits, accurate acoustical correction and sound amplification, a spacious sanctuary where all could see and follow the liturgy, and an interior suffused with a devotional and religious atmosphere. A ceremonial groundbreaking was held on March 23, 1952; the cornerstone was laid on June 28, 1953. The first Mass in the new Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus was celebrated by Bishop McNamara on December 8, 1954, and Samuel Cardinal Strich, Archbishop of Chicago, officiated the formal and ceremonial dedication on May 26, 1955. By 1967 Msgr. Hoover was presiding over a parish flock of 1,468 families with 5,335 members, and the marble altar and ambo were installed in 1973 to mark the diocese's silver jubilee. A major renovation of the cathedral took place during the pastorate of the Rev. Stanley Orlikiewicz, with Bishop Joseph Imesch, in 1991. The 40-year-old building needed extensive work: crumbling exterior stone, an aging boiler, asbestos abatement, and the translucent mosaic window casings. The total repair cost exceeded $3 million. The refurbished cathedral was rededicated in August 1991 in time for the parish's 75th anniversary jubilee dinner in 1992. Highlights of that renovation included repainting the ceiling of the narthex (the Raynor Avenue main entrance) and redecorating the sanctuary in a scheme that changed from the original cream-and-gold to a deeper palette, while the altar was repositioned closer to the congregation and the baptismal font was moved into the nave of the church. In 2018 the parish completed a restoration of the 190-foot campanile, and the cathedral continues today as both the spiritual seat of the Diocese of Joliet and a thriving parish of approximately 2,100 families.