Maxo Vanka Murals at St. Nicholas Church, Millvale, PA

St. Nicholas Church doesn't look like much from the outside.  I've passed by it many times on PA-28, and I've never thought anything of it.  It's located in a dense, hard-to-reach neighborhood of Millvale, with a busy state highway screaming past.

But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently ran an article about the historic icons that grace the interior.  Wow!  This place is worth seeing!

It's a Croatian Catholic church, and the murals were mainly painted in two phases: the late 30s, when the Nazi threat was menacing the Croatian homeland, and in the early 40s, when Croatia was under the crushing heel of the Nazis.

And so, the murals have two themes running throughout: the sometimes hellish life back in the old country and the sometimes hellish life in the mills, and mines, and factories of the new country.

My cellphone camera was nearly worthless in the church's dim light.  This mural depicts Croatian women in the old country, mourning for a fallen son.

But a strong social justice theme also haunts the walls of St. Nicholas.  Here is a Pittsburgh robber baron, a tycoon, feasting sumptuously, being served by an African-American, with a beggar on the floor--echoing Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

Opposite the feasting tycoon, there is an impoverished family of Croatian immigrants eating cabbage soup and bread.  A ghostly Jesus is standing among them.  My picture of that mural did not come out.  But here is Mary of the Seven Sorrows.

And this eerie specter is Mother Croatia being crucified by the Nazis.

The angel is holding a cautioning finger to his lips.  The tour guide seemed to believe that he was telling Croatian immigrants not to talk too much because their distinctive accents would get them labeled and mistreated.

There were some traditional religious themes, like these two of the four evangelists.

The ceiling was the crowning achievement of the whole church.  It shows the ascending Christ, soaring above all the brokenness and evil depicted elsewhere in the walls.  Vanka painted himself into this scene.  He's one of the minor characters in the lower right hand corner of it all, looking on dubiously but hopefully.  The passion flower, native to Croatia, is blooming in even the darkest of murals, hinting at the hope of renewal and new life.

This is a terrible shot of the spookiest mural in the house.  A gas-masked figure in a black robe and white hood holds a sword in a bloodied hand.  In the other hand he holds the scales of injustice, in which gold outweighs bread.  Vanka believed (correctly) that most war is the result of greed.

There's so much at St. Nicholas that I was unable to capture.  Mother Mary is rampaging among soldiers, breaking the barrels of guns in her strong, peasant-woman hands.  Other soldiers, in attempting to stab one another with their bayonets, are seen thrusting the blades into the side of the agonizing Christ.  This place cannot be described or done justice on a blog; it has to be visited in person.  Google it.  It's open for free tours on Saturdays from 11am until 2pm.  The tours are free, but please drop something in the basket to help preserve this Pittsburgh treasure for future generations.