Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on July 4, 2021.
A statue of Jesus on the altar of the Saint Pauline Center.
I have fond memories of Route 61. During my childhood summers, it was a yellow brick road to the paradise that was Knoebels Amusement Park. The lush mountain scenery and small towns my family and I passed through, along with the increasingly elaborate billboards advertising the park (a 3-D ferris wheel!), made the journey as exciting as the destination. Last winter, I had the idea to do a column about interesting places people can visit on the way to Knoebels. During my research, I found that Knoebels is surrounded by an unusually large number of religious sites. Route 61 is a sort of pilgrimage route, probably the only one on Earth that ends with roller coasters and baked potatoes. You can call it El Camino de Kozmo. In this column, I seek to reveal the histories of these holy places and what they mean to the people who worship there. From great churches to one man’s passion, these sites tell diverse stories of faith, love and humanity’s relationship with the divine in Northeast Pennsylvania. In the second installment of this series, I take a look at the Saint Pauline Center in Kulpmont.
Saint Pauline
KULPMONT - Al Visintainer of Mount Carmel had holy blood in his veins. He was first cousin to Saint Pauline of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, who was beatified in 1991. To honor the occasion, three pieces of her body were turned into relics. One was given to Pope John Paul II. The second is on display at Pauline’s former convent in Brazil. The third, a finger bone encased in Brazilian volcanic rock, was given to Al. At the time, Al was the owner of Visintainer’s Motel, Restaurant and Lounge in Mount Carmel. Saint Pauline’s cousin was a World War II veteran and church usher who gave spaghetti dinners to the local football team. Saint Pauline’s cousin was a lifelong member of the NRA, as well as the Tyrolean Club, the Mount Carmel Rotary Club, the Mount Carmel Elle and the Carmelite Over 50 Club. It is from this finger bone that the Saint Pauline Foundation grew. In 2003, the Foundation built a religious center and pilgrimage site in Kulpmont, and Al became its President. In 2016, the Bishop of Harrisburg declared it an official pilgrimage site.
The Saint Pauline Center is Coal Country’s answer to Lourdes, with the spectacle to match. After climbing the stairs in the vestibule, past the statues and stone waterfalls, the first thing on your right is the gift shop. It sells Saint Pauline t-shirts and other memorabilia - holy water bottles, $3, keychains, $5.
The Center vestibule. The portrait on the wall is of Saint Pauline.
The gift shop.
Al died in 2017 at the age of 90, but his Center lives on. June 19 was raffle day, one of Saint Pauline’s many fundraisers. The next day, several unclaimed prizes sit beside the Pietas and rosaries, including wine glasses, handbags and the Battery Daddy, which promises to “Store and Organize ALL your batteries!”
JoAnne Sassani, President of the Saint Pauline Center, was sitting at a Formica table with her fellow board members when the phone rang.
“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath. It was her nephew in Pittsburgh, who calls her “16 times a day.” She put her phone back in her purse and continued to tell the story of why she believes in Heaven. Her mother was in hospice care, losing her battle with Alzheimer’s. Two hours after the priest delivered last rites, she jumped upright in her bed, stared at the corner of the room for a week and died. Sassani believes that her mother was looking into the other side.
Saint Pauline board member Corrine Klose has a similar story. When she worked at the evangelical hospital in Lewisburg, she met a guard at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary who went into cardiac arrest eight times and had to be resuscitated. During the ordeal, he saw his mother, calling to him. “Not yet,” he told her. Then, he woke up.
“He was not a wishy-washy kind of guy,” Klose said. “He was not a hearts and flowers kind of guy. There are some people who think, when you die you die. That makes me firmly believe that there is life after death.”
(Clockwise) Saint Pauline Foundation Board Members Bob Greco, Debbie Perles, Michelle Varano, JoAnne Sassani and Corrine Klose
Those experiences brought Klose and Sassani to the Saint Pauline Center. Beyond the gift shop, the Center is a place of passion and pain, covered in images of the enraptured agony of afflicted saints. On one wall is a lenticular image of Jesus on the cross, opening and closing his eyes depending on where you’re standing.
The worshippers who come to Saint Pauline - usually 50 to 100 on any given week - see their own suffering in these paintings and statues. They come to forget about their troubles and be comforted.
“When people come in and see this,” Sassani says, “it sort of reaffirms their faith in God. They get a religious feeling, a warm feeling when they’re here, that they don’t get elsewhere.”
Saint Pauline contains relics of over 150 apostles and saints (the brochure boasts relics from Biblical times to the modern day). The relics are mostly tiny bone fragments from closed churches and monasteries around the world. The holy names given to these bones grace churches throughout the Coal Region.
“The main thing we’re trying to do here is keep the memory of the saints alive,” said Treasurer Bob Greco. Greco believes that his whole life as a Catholic has led him to being a custodian of these holy relics.
“So many churches named after saints have closed,” he said. “People have the opportunity to come in here and ask for their intercession and learn a little bit about their history.”
At first, Klose thought it was “kind of wild” for the preserved skeletons of saints to be on display in places like the Vatican, but she’s gotten used to it. Klose has visited the Saint Pauline museum in São Paulo, Brazil, and showed me photos taken there. One of the photos had a crucifix that was supposedly not there at the time the photo was taken. Klose takes it as a sign.
“There have been miracles,” she said, “and people have benefitted from their devotion.”
Other relics are personal effects, including a piece of rock that was purportedly taken from the tomb of the Virgin Mary. The Center is also home to an eclectic collection of Catholic art and artifacts. There’s a skull cap worn by Pope John Paul II, who canonized Pauline as a saint in 2002, and a canvas painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe. A note is attached to the frame of the painting, a prayer for a beloved black sheepdog. The columns in the Chapel of the Crucifixion bear processional crosses from historic, long-closed area churches that served immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe.
The Center’s most notable relic belongs to its namesake. Saint Pauline was born Amabile Visintainer in 1865, in northern Italy's Tyrol region. At the age of ten, she and her parents moved to Brazil. In 1895, the devout young Amabile joined a spiritual community of other women, founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and gave herself the new name of Pauline. For the rest of her life, Pauline cared for those forgotten by Brazilian society - the poor, sick, dying, homeless, orphans and former slaves. Pauline suffered from diabetes, even losing her right arm to the disease. Despite this, she continued serving her convent, sewing with one hand. She died in 1942 at the age of 77. Her final words were reported to be “God’s will be done.”
Over 60 years later, the Center in her name opened in a vacant building that was once a Catholic church.
“Miraculously, the place stayed,” Greco said, “and we were able to purchase it. There’s so much history here. We started with nothing, nothing whatsoever.”
The pilgrims of Saint Pauline believe that hers and other relics have the power to cure their own ailments. They pray for intercession, for a saint to heal themselves or their families. Like Sassani and Klose, they admire how Saint Pauline showed compassion, while enduring unbearable pain. Do they believe these relics can heal because it is true, or is it true because they believe it? Whatever the answer, the letters still come, thanking the Center for curing them and their families.
“There’s so many miraculous incidents that I heard about,” Greco said, “and people have told me about their contacts. It’s a center of spirituality, and people that come in here tell us about how some of their prayers have been answered.”
The statue of Saint Pauline in the Center’s grotto was hand-carved by Tom Ostrowski of Kulpmont. After a car accident, Ostrowski lost the use of his hands. After praying to Saint Pauline, his hands started to work again.
Tom Ostrowski's statue of Saint Pauline in the grotto.
Sassani has taken relics to a little boy made deaf by meningitis and her own aunt, who held a piece of Saint Pauline for over an hour as she suffered a brain bleed.
“I enjoy seeing people and hearing their stories,” she said. “People have called me and I talked with them while they held the relic, and it gave them comfort.”
Due to her own battle with the disease, Pauline is unofficially known as the patron saint of diabetes. Every summer the Center holds Camp Pauline, a camp for diabetic, pre-diabetic and obese children to exercise, eat healthy meals and learn about active lifestyles. Sassani has a history of diabetes in her family, and said that it is a serious problem in the Kulpmont area due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
“I have taken her relic to family members who were sick,” Sassani said, “and they have held it, and they have recovered, not from diabetes but from other things.”
When Sassani was describing her mother’s final moments, she said “I think sometimes they need to know that they’re gonna be okay.”
That is the reason why places like the Saint Pauline Center exist; so people can know that they’re gonna be okay.