The article examines the work of Slovenian priests in St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Ely, northern Minnesota, from the missionary era to the present day, as a sequence of ruptures and continuities in the life of an immigrant ethnic parish. Through a comparative analysis of three sustained dimensions, institutional-communal, linguistic-ethnic, and pastoral model, the authors trace a transformation in which the meaning of »Slovenian« in parish life gradually shifted from demographic fact to conscious effort and finally to a heritage marker. The founding model established by Monsignor Joseph Francis Buh rested on organic ethnicity, missionary mobility, and a threefold pastoral role in which the priest served as the liturgical, organizational, and symbolic center of the community. The long tenure of Frank Mihelčič sustained this model with increasing effort and brought it to its institutional apex with the opening of the third church building in 1958, while a gradual, long-invisible erosion of the Slovenian linguistic and ethnic character was already underway in the depths of parish life. The postwar priests, among them John Dolšina and John Šuštaršič, both political émigrés from Yugoslavia, maintained »Slovenian« as a reflective rather than organic category. In the most recent period, St. Anthony's Parish has evolved into an institution with a rich Slovenian history, in which »Slovenian« functions primarily as a heritage identity.
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