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

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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

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Influenza Pandemic and the Sisters

...ters were put into direct contact with the flu when caring for the sick, a number of them would also become infected with the disease. It was recorded that 23 sisters died from the flu. One such case reported in the Catholic Standard and Times stated that Mother Marie Aloysius

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Patrick Coad, patentee of the galvanic battery, and interesting miscellaneous items

...(1783-1872), an Irish immigrant who settled in Philadelphia, was the first American patentee of a graduated galvanic battery with insulated poles. Coad was a noted teacher and lecturer of medicine and the natural sciences, but gained wider notoriety after he invented and patented his galvanic battery in March 1842. The

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