St. Aloysius Catholic Church was a Roman Catholic parish church at 19 I Street in the Near Northeast neighborhood of

Washington, D. C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

It was administered by the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

since its founding and is named for

St. Aloysius Gonzaga Aloysius de Gonzaga, SJ (; 9 March 156821 June 1591) was an Italian aristocrat who became a member of the Society of Jesus. While still a student at the Roman College, he died as a result of caring for the victims of a serious epidemic. He was ...

. It is often associated with

Gonzaga College High School Gonzaga College High School is a private Catholic college-preparatory high school for boys in Washington, D.C. Founded by the Jesuits in 1821 as the Washington Seminary, Gonzaga is named in honor of Aloysius Gonzaga, an Italian saint from the ...

, to which it is physically connected. The church building is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. In 2012 the parish was closed and merged with Holy Redeemer church.

History

The church building was constructed in 1859 and catered to many of the

Irish Catholic Irish Catholics () are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland, defined by their adherence to Catholic Christianity and their shared Irish ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage.The term distinguishes Catholics of Irish descent, particul ...

s that resided in the surrounding neighborhoods, particularly Swampoodle. ''

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'' reported that President

James Buchanan James Buchanan Jr. ( ; April 23, 1791June 1, 1868) was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. He also served as the United States Secretary of State, secretary of state from 1845 to 1849 and represented Pennsylvan ...

and several Cabinet members were present for the dedication of the church on October 16, 1859. Jesuit Father Benedict Sestini, a Mathematics teacher at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

, served as the church's architect. The painting above the main altar, showing Aloysius Gonzaga receiving his first

Holy Communion The Eucharist ( ; from , ), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an ordinance in others. Christians believe that the rite was instituted by J ...

from the hands of Cardinal (St.)

Charles Borromeo Charles Borromeo (; ; 2 October 1538 – 3 November 1584) was an Catholic Church in Italy, Italian Catholic prelate who served as Archdiocese of Milan, Archbishop of Milan from 1564 to 1584. He was made a Cardinal (Catholicism), cardinal in 156 ...

, was the work of the noted

Constantino Brumidi Constantino Brumidi (26 July 1805 – 19 February 1880) was a Greek-Italian painter and a Naturalization, naturalized American citizen, best known and honored for his fresco work, ''The Apotheosis of Washington, Apotheosis of Washington'', in the ...

, who is famous for painting the

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

es in the

rotunda A rotunda () is any roofed building with a circular ground plan, and sometimes covered by a dome. It may also refer to a round room within a building (an example being the one below the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.). ...

of the

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. Brumidi was a friend of Father Sestini and depicted him and the pastor, Father Bernadine Wiget, in the painting. The model for St. Aloysius' mother was parishioner Adele Cutts Douglas, wife of Illinois Senator

Stephen Douglas Stephen Arnold Douglas ( né Douglass; April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. As a U.S. senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 ...

. On September 9, 1862, three years after the church was dedicated, the

District of Columbia Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

's military governor made a requisition to Father Wiget to use the church as a military hospital. This was at height of the

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and shortly after the

Second Battle of Bull Run The Second Battle of Bull Run or Battle of Second Manassas was fought August 28–30, 1862, in Prince William County, Virginia, as part of the American Civil War. It was the culmination of the Northern Virginia Campaign waged by Confederate ...

. The Pastor made a counter-proposal which was within the requirements and time-frame of the military governor. Father Wiget offered to erect a hospital on K Street just north of the church and parishioners completed the 250-bed hospital in only eight days. In appreciation, the hospital was named St. Aloysius to honor the Church. The church, one of the largest in Washington, D.C., has undergone several renovations/restorations. In 1892, the church was repainted, the current solid oak pews were added, and upgrades were made to the heating system of the massive church. The church's interior was again painted in the 1930s. In 1958, Gibbons and Associates, a renowned church-decorating firm created a new interior scheme that incorporated mauve and teal with silver leaf accents. By 1964, the area which served the diocese was changing rapidly, with urban development and high rise office buildings destroying the old neighborhood of small houses, with a primarily black population. In that year, Father Horace McKenna, S.J., was brought from Ridge, Maryland, to serve as assistant pastor. Through the efforts of Father McKenna and the formal sponsorship of Georgetown University as well as Gonzaga College High School, a new housing development was created, through which the original residents would be given priority in housing. Washington attorney Eugene L. Stewart, a prominent Washington attorney, provided expert technical advice in bringing the project, named Sursum Corda (Lift up your hearts) to completion. Located between L and M Streets at First Street, N.W., Sursum Corda's original number of occupants was 1,100, of whom 700 were under 16. The housing project won architectural awards for the dignity of its design, in recognition that the project had created a village instead of a project. Simultaneously with the development of the new housing, an emergency feeding program grew to a formal organization called SOME (So Others Might Eat). Dr. Veronia Maz, a sociologist at Georgetown University, Father McKenna, Father Ralph Kuehner, Rev. Griffin Smith of EEFO (Efforts for Ex-Offenders), Father Roger Gallagher and Father James Casey of St. Joseph's Church on Capitol Hill joined. The first meal was served on July 1, 1971. In the mid-1970s with the majority of the neighborhood surrounded blighted and razed for office building construction, the dwindling congregation abandoned the upper sanctuary and retreated to the basement church for more than twenty-five years. In October 1993, the parish began a complete restoration of the sanctuary. It selected Church Restoration Services as general contractor and decorator under the guidance of architect Duane Cahill. This $1.6 million interior renovation/restoration required scaffolding the entire sanctuary in order to replaster the more than 28,000 s.f. of wall area and installed 28 new ceiling panels with replicated plaster medallions. The sanctuary area was extended into the nave by removing much of the marble communion rail and building a larger altar area. In this renovation, the church was made handicapped accessible. Under the direction of Stephen J. Ferrandi, the current color scheme incorporating various shades of blue accents over a base of cream colored walls accentuated by 23-carat gold leaf was installed. Upon completion of the restoration, the Painters and Decorators Contractors Association awarded this project the status of Best Restoration in the United States for 1994. The project was completed in July 1994. In 2012, the Jesuits announced they could no longer staff the 300 household parish. The parish was merged with the nearby Holy Redeemer Parish, which had broken away from St. Aloysius in 1922. The merged Holy Redeemer Parish uses St. Aloysius as a chapel of ease for daily Mass, weddings and funerals. The building is owned by the Jesuits and also serves as a chapel for Gonzaga High School. The Father McKenna Center continued to operate in the basement of the church. On April 6, 2017, a tornado caused significant damage to St. Aloysius Church, destroying part of the roof and causing damage to the interior. No one at Gonzaga College High School was hurt.

List of pastors

Anthony Kohlmann Anthony Kohlmann (born Anton; July 13, 1771 – April 11, 1836) was an Alsatian Catholic priest, missionary, theologian, and Jesuit educator. He played a decisive role in the early formation of the Archdiocese of New York, where he was ...

(1821–1824) # Adam Marshall (1824–1825) # Jeremiah Keiley (1826–1827) # John E. Blox (1848–1851) # Samuel Barber (1851–1854) # Hippolyte J. De Neckere (1854–1857) # Burchard Villiger (1857–1858) # Charles H. Stonestreet (1858–1860) # William Francis Clarke (1860–1861) # Bernardin F. Wiget (1861–1868) # James Clark (1868–1874) # Charles K. Jenkins (1874–1881) # Robert J. Fulton (1881–1882) # John J. Murphy (1882–1885) # Edward A. McGurk (1885–1890) # Cornelius Gillespie (1890–1898) # John F. Galligan (1898–1899) # Edward X. Fink (1899–1907) # Joseph J. Himmel (1907) # Charles W. Lyons (1907–1909) # Eugene De L. McDonnell (1909–)

References

Citations

Sources

* * Monagan John S. "Horace: Priest of the People", Washington, D.C. Rose Hill Books, 1985. pp. 113–121.

External links