Talk:Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist

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Section 1

The Mass was first offered in Stamford in the home of Patrick H. Drew, by Father James Smyth of New Haven, in September 1842. Freedom of Religion was not practiced in Connecticut until after the passage of the state constitution in 1818. Until then, Roman Catholics were expressly forbidden to settle within the colony, unless a public denunciation of the Catholic faith was made. In 1842, a resident priest was assigned to Bridgeport, with care of the Catholics in other towns, including Stamford. By 1843, the Diocese of Hartford was erected, and the small Catholic community of Stamford benefited from the ministry of priests from Bridgeport, Norwalk and from the Jesuit community at Saint John’s College, Fordham, including Father Francis McFarland, a future bishop of Hartford.

The Catholic community of Stamford then numbered three families, all immigrants from Ireland. In 1847, during the first months of the reign of Blessed Pope Pius IX, Saint John the Evangelist was given a resident priest.

Section 2

However, there was a backlash of anti-Catholic sentiment. The construction of the small chapel and the independence of Saint John’s were the source of great pride for the local Catholic community, despite growing anti-Catholic antagonism and violence. Local newspapers recorded the increase in numbers among Catholics, and their church construction, but not always with congratulatory sentiments. The growing presence of the Catholic Church in the United States was an unhappy reality for many among the Protestant majority, and was not received with universal approval. A strong Nativist sentiment developed into an anti-Catholic movement, and succeeded in the election William T. Minor, a Stamford lawyer, as governor of the State of Connecticut in 1855. He expressed his anti-Catholicism in his inaugural address:

“But as a matter of policy connected with the privilege of citizenship to be conferred upon the alien, we have the right to enquire how far the allegiance due from the members of the Romish Church to their spiritual head, the pope, is compatible with the allegiance due their adopted country.”

Organized attacks in the Stamford and Norwalk newspapers, in editorials and doctored “news” stories from around the world, portrayed the papal Church of Rome as the primordial enemy of democracy. A seemingly never ending series of lectures at Stamford’s public theaters and halls, and sermons in various local Protestant churches by the likes of ex-priest revolutionary Alessandro Gavazzi, thrilled Protestant audiences and confirmed their certitude that the anti-Catholic legislation by Connecticut’s Nativist governor from Stamford was necessary. Following World War I, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiments steadily grew in Connecticut. The Ku Klux Klan had been re-organized in 1915 in Georgia, preaching a radical doctrine of white, Protestant supremacy in America. All that was foreign—Black, Jewish and Catholic—came under its ban. The Klan was particularly virulent in New Haven, New Britain and Stamford. During the elections of 1924, Stamford played host to one of the largest of the Klan’s state meetings. Father James O’Brien, pastor of Saint John’s, led the way repeatedly warning the people of Stamford against the Klan, while defending his Catholic parishioners.

Section 3

The Catholic population in Fairfield County grew rapidly in the mid-1800s: from the 1,100 Catholics in 1850 to over 15,000 persons in 1870! By 1870, this large and growing Catholic population was served by only eight priests, two of whom were at Stamford’s Saint John’s, administering the sacraments to the town’s 3,000 Catholics, as well as to those Catholics in the recently established missions in Greenwich, Darien and outlying villages.