Old St. Joseph's

Old St. Joseph's began with a church built on this site in 1733 by Rev. Joseph Greaton, a Jesuit missionary from England. After the Provincial Council investigated reports that a "Romish Chappel" had been established, William Penn's 1701 Charter of Previleges, which guaranteed freedom of worship to all who confessed "One Almighty God," protected the chapel because it took precedence over the English Penal Laws. When the first public Catholic Mass was celebrated here in 1733, Philadelphia was the only place in the thirteen colonies where public Catholic services could be held legally. The Jesuits at St. Joseph's established Catholicism in an important urban center, took part in the civic and political life of the colony, and evangelized southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York for the American Catholic church. The first chapel served a congregation of thirty-five German and Irish worshipers, a larger church was built in 1757 as the Catholic population grew, and the present church, the third on the site, was built in 1839. From the beginning, the Jesuits at St. Joseph's helped newly arriving Catholics gain a foothold in a new land, ministering in the 18th century to Acadian exiles in 1755 and refugees from Santo Domingo in the 1790s. The city's first African-American Catholic congregation met here in the 1850s, Italian immigrants planned their first Philadelphia church, St. Magdalen de Pazzi, here in 1852, and St. Joseph's College was established on this site in 1851. Still an active Catholic parish, Old St. Joseph's has for more than 250 years served the spiritual and material needs of people across the Philadelphia metropolitan area regardless of religious affiliation or social and economic status, while encouraging dialogue and mutual respect.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States