Religion

April 18, 2008

The Irish In New Haven: Religion

The church was always an important part of the Irish immigrant’s life. In New Haven, that church was St. Mary’s. St. Mary’s Parish was established as a community of the faithful in 1832. At that time, there were about two hundred Catholics in New Haven. It is the oldest Catholic parish in New Haven and the second oldest in Connecticut.

The Knight’s of Columbus were originally organized in New Haven. “On October 2, 1881, a small group of men met in the basement of St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut. Called together by their parish priest,Father Michael J. McGiveney ,these men formed a fraternal society that would one day become the world’s largest Catholic family fraternal service organization.”~from
The History of the Knights.

The Catholics in New Haven saw the need in the mid 1800’s to purchase land for a
cemetary on the south side of Columbus Ave. near the West River. They named it “St. Bernard’s” and
many of New Haven’s Irish immigrants are buried there.

The Sisters of Mercy were responsible for establishing one of the first orphanages in New Haven. The Sisters, having arrived in New Haven the previous year, conducted a fair in 1853 for the benefit of the forty orphans sustained by the Catholic parish. Town records also note an appropriation in 1861 “of 150 dollars to the Orphan Asylum managed by the Sisters of Mercy.” The Catholic Orphan Asylum of St. Francis was chartered in 1865.

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