He arrived here almost a year ago from Rudnik, a small town in southern Poland, to help a La Crosse parish. Now Kowalski is starting his fifth week in Eau Claire. He is an associate pastor at Sacred Heart-St. While America has a shortage of priests, Poland has an abundance, said the Rev. Paul Gitter, lead pastor of the parishes. This allows Polish priests to do missionary work in other countries.
Missionary priests are most common in the United States and several Western European countries.
Third World countries have an especially high number of priests, Gitter said. The La Crosse Diocese has maybe seven or eight priests from other countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, India, the Philippines and Poland, Gitter said. Poland became a Christian country about 1,000 years ago and since then has been predominantly Roman Catholic. This means large congregations. Larger Polish churches, for example, might celebrate eight Masses on a Sunday and have 10 priests in the rectory, Gitter said.