The Church of the Holy Family is a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

located in

New Rochelle, New York New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state of ...

, United States. Founded in 1913, the Church of the Holy Family has undergone expansion and re-construction of its physical church over the years. The church is ethnically and linguistically diverse, reflecting the demographics of its surrounding area, as it draws considerable numbers of

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

, Southeast Asian, African, and Italian parishioners. As of 2013, the church served around 1,200 families and educated 380 children in grades four through seven in religious education programs.

History

The Church of the Holy Family was founded in 1913 as an independent parish in response to overcrowding at St. Gabriel's Church and a growing Catholic population of Irish and Germans in the North End of New Rochelle, which was then predominantly farmland. At the time of its establishment, the church had no dedicated physical structure. The inaugural pastor, Fr. Andrew Roche, celebrated

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

in a former butcher shop and lived at the

College of New Rochelle The College of New Rochelle (CNR) was a private Catholic college with its main campus in New Rochelle, New York, but also in Australia, England, and Germany. It was founded as the College of St. Angela by Mother Irene Gill, OSU of the Ursuline ...

, traveling back and forth by foot. The church was designed by New Rochelle resident, architect Joseph Hubert McGuire. In 1915, construction on a dedicated church building began and was completed by 1916. The church was dedicated in 1917. The first mass celebrated in the new building was a midnight

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

mass, as prior to that, masses were being held in the basement of the building under construction. The Holy Family School was opened in 1921 for first and second grade students in the basement of the church, with pews used to form a makeshift classroom. Students were taught by

Dominican Sisters The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of Cal ...

. A purpose-built school was opened in 1922 above the church with eight classrooms and was gradually expanded as enrollment increased. The 1970s saw the Holy Family School reach its highest enrollment of approximately 900 students. Thereafter, student enrollment declined and the school was closed in 2005. The school reopened in 2018, but was closed again in June 2020 due to financial issues related to the

COVID-19 Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. In September 2021, a 17th-century painting of the Holy Family and John the Bapstist, painted by Italian artist,

Cesare Dandini Cesare Dandini (1 October 1596– 7 February 1657) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in his native city of Florence. Biography He was the older brother of the painter Vincenzo Dandini (1609–1675). His nephew, Pi ...

, was discovered inside the church by an art history professor from nearby

Iona College Iona University is a Private university, private Catholic Church, Roman Catholic university with a main campus in New Rochelle, New York. It was founded in 1940 by the Congregation of Christian Brothers and occupies a campus of in New Rochell ...

References

{{New Rochelle, New York Christian organizations established in 1913 Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York Roman Catholic churches completed in 1916 Roman Catholic churches in New Rochelle, New York 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States