Lietuvos Bažnyčios / Churches of Lithuania, Vol. I: Telšių vyskupija / The Diocese of Telšiai

Lietuvos Bažnyčios Vol. I is one of the most significant reference works produced by the Lithuanian diaspora during the Soviet occupation period. At a moment when the churches of the Telšiai Diocese were being closed, converted, or demolished by Soviet authorities, Kviklys and his network of collaborators — some of them unnamed contributors inside Lithuania at personal risk — assembled a comprehensive documentary record of over 150 parishes: their architectural histories, art objects, bells, altars, and the biographies of bishops and priests who had been killed or exiled. The volume thus functions simultaneously as a scholarly ecclesiastical gazetteer, a monument to Lithuanian Catholic identity, and an act of resistance against cultural erasure.

For the Lithuanian diaspora community in Detroit and across North America, this book carried deep personal and communal resonance: subscribers and patrons are listed by name and city from across the United States, Canada, and Australia, making the volume itself a record of a transnational community organized around shared religious and national heritage. For researchers today, it is an indispensable primary source on the ecclesiastical, architectural, and social history of Žemaitija under both pre-war independence and Soviet occupation.

Diaspora documentary scholarship: the Lithuanian Library Press in Chicago assembled clandestine photography from inside Soviet-occupied Lithuania alongside archival research to preserve the record of an entire diocesan ecclesiastical landscape that Soviet authorities were suppressing and destroying.