OBITUARIES - Jan. 16, 2009

Msgr. John Kucingis, 100, a Catholic priest who fled the Communist regime in his native Lithuania and served as pastor at St. Casimir’s Church in Los Feliz for nearly 40 years, died Jan. 6 at the church rectory.

Born Jonas Kucingis in Sveksna, Lithuania, on Dec. 23, 1908, he was ordained a priest in 1937. He was arrested four times by Soviet police in the 1940s before escaping first to Germany and then to the United States in 1946.

He came to Los Angeles, where St. Casimir’s parish had been founded by other Lithuanian refugees in 1941. After the church pastor died in 1947, Kucingis carried on, leading efforts to build the parish church, school, rectory and convent. He encouraged church members to sponsor Lithuanian refugees and speak out about Communist repression in their homeland.

“We were thrown out of our country,” Kucingis told The Times in 1969. “We were happy there. Like all people who are exiled, we brought a mission with us, to help those at home who are suffering, to be a loudspeaker for the whole world.”

Kucingis also established the church’s Lithuanian Language Saturday School, with classes taught in Lithuanian.

The church has about 3,000 members but attracts many Lithuanian Americans from across the Western United States. The parish remains a vibrant social and cultural center for the city’s Lithuanian community, in addition to being its religious focal point.

Kucingis retired as pastor in 1984 but continued to live at the parish rectory and lead church services.