[The church's] story really begins in western Pennsylvania, where a young coal miner aspired to the priesthood.
Epilepsy kept 16-year-old Thomas Purcell from being accepted into a Catholic seminary. So, he spent five days in prayer to St. Stanislaus Kostka of Poland, who also faced obstacles in his path to a religious vocation. The 17th-century saint’s father wanted him to become an influential politician.
Purcell promised to build and dedicate a church to the saint if he was cured, and his prayer to become a priest was answered.
He traveled west to Spokane, where priests were in demand. After teaching at a school affiliated with Gonzaga University, he was invited by an Idaho bishop to study for the priesthood in Montreal and was ordained. Purcell kept his vow by building the Rathdrum church.
From the Spokane Spokesman-Review
OLD RATHDRUM CHURCH AND STORY OF TWO SAINTS
November 11, 2012 at 5:00 am | By SYD ALBRIGHT
On the corner of McCarthy and Second Avenue in the heart of the old part of Rathdrum, St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church has stood for more than a century.
It is the oldest brick church in Idaho, and is registered as a historic building.
In 1885, Bishop Alphonsus J. Glorieux was the driving force to build a church to serve the Catholics in the Coeur d'Alene area. He chose Rathdrum, then called Westwood.
It was just a small town of 300 to 500 people, mostly loggers, farmers and merchants eking out a tough living in the frontier West.
The Jesuits in nearby Spokane who were building Gonzaga College offered to help.
At Gonzaga, the bishop met Thomas Purcell, a teacher whom he persuaded to enter the priesthood and who later became the priest in Rathdrum.
At first, Catholic services were held in homes. Then an old schoolhouse was converted into St. Rose Catholic Church. By 1901, the church was demolished and construction began on the brick church.
It was named after St. Stanislaus Kostka, a relatively obscure 17-year old Polish saint who did little in his short life, yet entered the pages of history and had this church and many others around the world named after him.
If there was a Polish connection, why was the Rathdrum church named after him rather than after the far more famous St. Stanislaus Krakow, patron saint of Poland? The two saints had very different stories.
From the Coeur d'Alene Press