St. Peter's Church, also known as St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, was a historic church in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...

that served as the first Catholic

pro-cathedral A pro-cathedral or procathedral is a parish Church (building), church that temporarily serves as the cathedral or co-cathedral of a diocese, or a church that has the same function in a Catholic missionary jurisdiction (such as an apostolic prefect ...

in the United States; first built in 1770, the church became the pro-cathedral of the

Diocese of Baltimore The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore () is the archdiocese of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in northern and western Maryland, western Maryland in the United States. It is the Metropolis (religious jurisdiction)#Western Catholic Ch ...

when the diocese was created in 1789, and the seat of Archbishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States. The church was situated on the 300 block of Charles Street at Saratoga Street. The first resident

pastor A pastor (abbreviated to "Ps","Pr", "Pstr.", "Ptr." or "Psa" (both singular), or "Ps" (plural)) is the leader of a Christianity, Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutherani ...

of the church was Fr. Charles Sewell of St. Mary's County. St. Peter's served all Catholics within the city of Baltimore who could travel to it, which was an anomaly among Catholic churches in the United States before 1884, which were largely defined by the nationality of their parishioners. The trustees of the pro-cathedral purchased six acres of land in Baltimore in 1814 to use as a burial ground for Catholics of the city. This cemetery was opened in 1816 and, when it ran out of space in 1887, was closed. The remains were transferred to the new cathedral cemetery. It served as the pro-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Baltimore until an official cathedral, the

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called the Baltimore Basilica, is a Catholic cathedral in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first Catholic cathedral built in the United States after the nat ...

, was built in 1821 to alleviate overcrowding at St. Peter's. With an increase of the Catholic population of Baltimore from 800 in 1792 to 10,000, the pro-cathedral was only able to accommodate a tenth of its total parishioners at any given Sunday

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

. The new cathedral was built one block to the north of St. Peter's. St. Peter's was closed in 1841, and demolished by 1845, when the

Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools The De La Salle Brothers, officially named the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (; ; ) abbreviated FSC, is a Catholic Church, Catholic Laity, lay religious congregation of pontifical right for men founded in Kingdom of Franc ...

established Calvert Hall on the site.

References

{{coord, 39, 17, 34, N, 76, 36, 55, W, display=title 1841 disestablishments in the United States Roman Catholic churches completed in 1770 Roman Catholic churches in Baltimore 18th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States