The article is based on sources located in the Archives of the Metropolitan Curia of Częstochowa. Over the two decades between the world wars, the population of Dąbrowa Górnicza increased from about 30,000 to around 42,000. Society was divided along political, social, ethnic, and religious lines (in addition to the Catholic majority, the city was home to many Protestants, Jews, Mariavites, and Polish Catholics). The life of the Catholic community centered around a massive parish church, but as it could barely accommodate the crowds of worshipers, Bishop Teodor Kubina of Częstochowa decided to establish two subsidiary parishes for the outlying parts of the city. On July 7, 1937, the parish of Christ the King was established for the new housing estates of Legionowi and Staszic, and the parish of St. Joseph in the northern part of Dąbrowa Górnicza. Until the end of the war, the construction of the church of Christ the King had not progressed beyond the selection of an appropriate site (meanwhile, masses were celebrated in a chapel arranged in a converted builders' frame-house), while work on St. Joseph’s church proceeded swiftly to completion in 1940.
The post-war history of the Church of Christ the King is a sad illustration of the hostile attitude of the communist regime towards the Catholic Church. A formal application for permission to build the church was first made in 1948, after the makeshift chapel had collapsed. Until 1952, the application moved back and forth between the parish priest, the parish council, and the provincial authorities in Katowice. Then the case was upgraded to the level of affairs of national importance and it became the subject of masses of correspondence, numerous meetings of delegations from the parish with the minister heading the Office for Religious Affairs (first Antoni Bida, then Marian Zygmanowski), and repeated interventions of the Episcopate with Poland’s Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz. The stalemate came to an end after the political breakthrough of October 1956. Once all the obstacles were removed, work on the construction of the new church could begin in 1958.