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Lietuvos Bažnyčios IV tomas: Panevėžio vyskupija / Churches of Lithuania Vol. IV: The Diocese of Panevėžys

Bronius Kviklys; Architektūriniai tekstai: Dr. inž. Jurgis Gimbutas; Dailininkas ir techninis redaktorius: Petras Aleksa; Redaktorius: Juozas Masilionis; Žemėlapis: Vitalis Matulaitis

1984

Historical and community context

Where this record belongs

Diaspora freedom

Year range
1981–1990
Denomination
Roman Catholic
Religious tradition
  • Roman Catholic
  • Jesuit
  • Marian Fathers
Institution type
  • Publisher
  • Press
  • Religious order
  • Parish
Community or institution
Amerikos Lietuvių Bibliotekos Leidykla / Lithuanian Library Press, Inc., Chicago
Institutional role
Publisher and distributor of Lithuanian diaspora reference literature; editorial board includes both lay scholars and Catholic clergy (Jesuit and Marian Fathers represented)

Introduction

This is Volume IV of Bronius Kviklys's monumental diaspora reference series documenting the churches of Lithuania, covering the Diocese of Panevėžys. Published in Chicago in 1984 during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, it preserves detailed historical, architectural, and ecclesiastical records of parishes and chapels that the occupying regime sought to suppress or destroy. The volume includes photographs, parish histories, maps, biographical entries of deceased priests, and a comprehensive table of contents spanning over 530 pages — making it an irreplaceable reference for Lithuanian Catholic heritage and diaspora memory.

Context and significance

Significance

Bronius Kviklys's 'Lietuvos Bažnyčios' series stands as one of the most ambitious documentary projects of the Lithuanian diaspora — a multi-volume encyclopedic effort to catalog every Catholic church, chapel, and parish in Lithuania while the country was under Soviet rule and such records were suppressed or inaccessible. Volume IV, covering the Diocese of Panevėžys, documents not only architectural and liturgical history but also the human stories of parishes under occupation, wartime destruction, and the fate of clergy forced into exile. The book was published in the Year of St. Casimir (1984), a symbolically charged moment for Lithuanian Catholic identity globally.

This copy carries exceptional provenance value: it bears the author's own signature on the title page and a handwritten dedication dated March 2, 1985 — less than a year after publication — acknowledging a priest supporter by name. This transforms the volume from a reference work into a primary document of diaspora social networks, clerical solidarity, and the personal relationships that sustained Lithuanian cultural institutions in exile. The biographical section documenting Panevėžys priests who died in emigration before 1984 (p. 514) is a significant prosopographical resource for Lithuanian Catholic diaspora history.

How this record carried memory

Diaspora documentary preservation — systematic encyclopedic recording of Lithuanian Catholic ecclesiastical heritage during Soviet occupation, produced by Lithuanian exile community institutions in Chicago to preserve historical memory that could not be published or maintained in Soviet-occupied Lithuania

Record connections

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