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
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
Anti-Catholicism in Jacksonian Philadelphia
...ics posed a genuine threat. Conspiracy theories of a papal takeover of the United States abounded. A large dimension of the Protestant revival that began in the late 1820s included militant attacks against the Catholic Church which claimed that the Catholic religion was threatening to America’s Protestant culture. Nativists and