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

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World War One Army Chaplains

...chbishop Prendergast in 1906, Father Wolfe served as assistant pastor to a number of parishes including St. Patrick’s and Assumption B.V.M.[4] When the United States entered World War I, Father Wolfe applied to be an army chaplain, being first assigned to Camp Meade in Maryland. In May 1918, he was

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Philadelphia’s First Bishop

...a diocese with a resident bishop, but colonial priests discouraged this effort. Fearful of re-igniting fierce anti-Catholic sentiment, and concerned about the public duties required of a bishop, American colonial priests declined all offers to establish an episcopate, or to allow a bishop to visit the colonies. The first American

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American Federation of Catholic Societies

...that the Church had experienced in the mid-1800s. Despite these concerns a number of archbishops and bishops supported the new organization and it slowly started to expend. In 1903, the Pennsylvania Federation was founded with the goal of “cementing the bonds of fraternal union among the Catholic laity and the

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