"With a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith"

A Catholic Mass, the first in English America, was celebrated here on March 25, 1634, on the first day of the year on the old Julian Calendar and the Feast of the Annunciation. Catholic leaders were determined to practice their religion as they planted their new Maryland Colony after leaving an England that was persecuting Catholics and a Europe racked by bloody religious wars. Lord Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, instructed Catholic settlers to treat Protestants with as much mildness and favor as justice would permit. By 1649, the Maryland General Assembly made this policy official through the Act Concerning Religion, which declared that no person professing belief in Jesus Christ should be troubled, molested, or discountenanced because of religion. Seventeenth-century Maryland was a leader on the road to religious toleration.

Maryland · United States