SHENANDOAH — The bishop who ministers to Lithuanians worldwide was impressed by the artifacts assembled in the Lithuanian Heritage Museum.
“It’s wonderful how you maintain connections to your Lithuanian roots,” Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas said Tuesday during a tour of the museum.
Based in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, his duties include maintaining contact with the Lithuanian diaspora.
On a tour that includes Boston and Chicago, he spent about two hours in the Shenandoah museum. In the U.S. for a month, his next visit is with Lithuanians in Maine.
“It reminds me of a small museum I visited in Patagonia,” Virbalas said.
Bishop Virbalas was accompanied by William Zalpys, director of the Roots project that has tended to Lithuanian cemeteries in Schuylkill County for several summers.
Under Zalpys’ supervision, a Chicago-based youth group will be maintaining Lithuanian cemeteries in the county in August.
Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas of Lithuania visited the Lithuanian Heritage Museum in Shenandoah on April 21, 2026. RON DEVLIN/STAFF PHOTO
Dr. Paul Skirmantas, museum curator, escorted Bishop Virbalas on a tour of the museum. A delegation from Lithuanian religious and cultural organizations turned out to greet the bishop.
“We’re very honored to have him here,” said Paul Domalakes, Knights of Lithuania Anthracite Council No. 144 treasurer. “We appreciate him coming.”
Bishop Virbalas spent a good deal of time looking at photos of Lithuanian families that emigrated to the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“My grandfather, Lionginas Gintautas, worked in the coal mines from around 1905 to 1910,” he said. “But he returned to Lithuania.”
The bishop was not sure if his grandfather worked in Schuylkill County or other parts of the coal region.
Peter Cieslukowski, a Shenandoah artist, explained some of his art work in the museum.
Cieslukowski’s illuminated depiction of the former St. George Catholic Church, once the oldest Lithuanian Catholic church in America, caught the bishop’s attention and he took photos of it.
Margaret Valinsky, Lithuanian Women’s Club of Schuylkill County president, showed the bishop a scrap book of news articles and photographs documenting Lithuanian heritage in the county.
Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas of Lithuania photographs an exhibit at the Lithuanian Heritage Museum in Shenandoah. Peter Cieslukowski and Margaret Valinsky accompany the bishop. RON DEVLIN/STAFF PHOTO
The heritage
The Lithuanian Heritage Museum was dedicated in the former Chiakowski Funeral Home at 318 E. Centre Street in September 2025.
Initially assembled by the Knights of Lithuania, items in the collection span 150 years of Lithuanian history in the coal region.
In storage for about a decade, the collection was gradually moved to the new location.
The late Anne Chaikovski Skirmantas, whose parents owned the funeral home, was named curator.
The collection documents the history of the estimated 100,000 Lithuanians who emigrated to the region between 1865 and 1915.
Because so many settled in Shenandoah, the town was designated “Little Lithuania,” according to a Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission marker on Main Street.
St. George Catholic Church in Shenandoah was the hub of Lithuanian religious activity in Shenandoah. The Allentown Catholic Diocese closed it in 2010.
The museum’s archive includes clothing, household items and religious artifacts the immigrants brought from Lithuania.
Wood carvings, straw art and woven tapestry from Lithuania are also displayed.
Margaret Valinsky, president of the Lithuanian Women’s Club, shows Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas a scrapbook at the Lithuanian Heritage Museum in Shenandoah on April 21, 2026. RON DEVLIN/STAFF PHOTO
Among its most compelling items is a scale model of the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania, where pilgrims built crosses in defiance of the country’s former Soviet-style government.
Pope John Paul II visited the Hill of Crosses, where he celebrated Mass before a crowd of 100,000 people in 1993. In a speech, the Pontiff called the site a symbol of the Lithuanian people’s faith.
Anne Skirmantas, who traveled widely in Lithuania, was the author of “Shenandoah,” a portrait of the borough sometimes referred to as the “Vilnius of Schuylkill County,” and “The Lithuanians of Schuylkill County,” an Images of America book.
Six months after opening the museum, a project dear to her heart, Anne died after a brief illness in March.