Philadelphia’s First Catholic Cathedral
...races its history to 1763, when a second church was needed for the growing number of Catholics in the city. Built on land originally bought to serve as a cemetery for Old St. Joseph’s, Old St. Mary’s was referred to as “Mission Number 1” as St. Joseph’s was seen as
Parish and School Closing
...2, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua announced plans to examine the closing of a number of parishes in North Philadelphia and the city of Chester. Both areas saw a major decrease in parishioners, with both areas losing around 60% of registered members from 1970 to 1990. Due to this and lingering financial
Papal Infallibility
...ic Church, such as from St. Francis de Sales in the 1500s, declaring it an official dogma created new tensions with Protestants and secular governments. The decrees and canons issued by the First Vatican Council in 1870 laid out the argument for the existence of Papal Infallibility. The Council declared
Manuscript Collections
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia records include the extant official correspondence of all of the bishops and archbishops of Philadelphia up to the present. The bishops' collections are rather small up to the episcopacy of Dennis Cardinal Dougherty (1918-1951), when the volume of his and subsequent collections increases significantly. Post-1920 materials