Founder, first and longtime, Prime Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church. Hodur was born in the village of Zarki, 35 miles from Kraków, Poland. He enrolled as a seminarian in Kraków and studied at Jagiellonian University. He left Europe in December 1892 for the United States of America, where he hoped to serve Polish immigrants. Hodur made his way to the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was sent to the seminary at St. Vincent's Benedictine Archabbey in Latrobe. On August 19, 1893, he was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church by Bishop William O'Hara and became pastor of St. Stanislaus Cathedral in Scranton. During the late 19th century many Polish immigrants to the U.S. became dismayed with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The U.S. Church had no Polish bishops and few Polish priests, and would not allow the Polish language to be taught in parish schools. The mainly ethnic Irish and German bishops helped establish hundreds of parishes for Poles, but priests were usually unable to speak Polish, and the new immigrants had poor or limited English. There were also disputes over who owned church property, particularly in Buffalo, New York and Scranton, Pennsylvania, with the parishioners demanding greater control. Although the majority of Polish-Americans remained with the Roman Catholic Church, where bilingual Polish-American priests and bishops were eventually ordained, many Polish-Americans in the meantime came to believe that these conditions were a manifestation of political and social exploitation of the Polish people. Father Hodur traveled to Rome in January 1898 to seek redress from the Holy See. Without finding satisfaction, he returned to the United States. After meeting with the parishioners he represented on that voyage, he made known his decision not to remain under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church. The result was his founding of the Polish National Catholic Church as an independent Catholic church in dialogue with the Catholic Church; it seeks full communion with the Holy See although it differs theologically in several important respects. The Polish National Catholic Church welcomes people of all ethnic, racial and social backgrounds. Hodur was consecrated a bishop on September 29, 1907, by Gerardus Gul, the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, Holland, assisted by Bishop Jan Van Thiel of Haarlem and Bishop Peter Spitz of Deventer. He then served as the first Prime Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church and consecrated other bishops, ensuring the maintenance of apostolic succession. From 1907–2003, the PNCC was a member of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht. When Bishop Hodur died his funeral was attended by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Charles L. Street, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Chicago, and Bishop Frederick J. Warnecke of the Diocese of Bethlehem, along with other prominent Episcopal Church leaders.