Richard C. Christy served as chaplain of the 78th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, from 1861 to 1864. He was credited as Pennsylvania’s first Catholic Civil War chaplain and the only one serving a chiefly non-Catholic regiment. Despite the anti-Catholic prejudice of the era, he gained a reputation for bravery and was known as the “Fighting Chaplain of the Army of the Cumberland.” Father Christy had been the first permanent pastor of this church. Hundreds of veterans attended his funeral in 1878.