THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511040422
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Catholics now celebrating the 175th anniversary of the creation of the Diocese of Richmond by Pope Pius VII in 1820 should know that Tidewater was the cradle of Catholicism in the Old Dominion.
Virginia's Catholic history began in 1570, when five Jesuits and a small party of ecclesiastics and laymen headed by Father Baptista de Segura established a mission near the present site of Yorktown. One year later the settlement, with the exception of a boy who was later rescued by a Spanish relief ship in 1572, was wiped out in an Indian raid.
Once the English had established themselves at Jamestown in 1607, the harsh anti-Catholic laws then imposed in the mother country were stringently enforced. Even so, there were Catholics among the earliest Norfolk area settlers. According to the records of Lower Norfolk County, a Catholic priest designated as Father Raymond was arrested in 1682 for marrying an unnamed couple. Later that year, Father Raymond was again arrested for marrying another couple and for saying mass. His sentences do not appear in the records, but church historians have speculated that he relocated to the more sympathetic Catholic colony of Maryland.
As Virginia's most important port with close connections with the West Indies, Norfolk undoubtedly numbered Catholics among its pre-Revolutionary population. But no attempt was made to establish a church here until 1791. In September of that year, the Abbe Jean Dubois (1764-1842) accompanied by other French priests and Catholic laymen arrived in Norfolk, having fled from France to escape death during the French Revolution.
Shortly after his arrival, Father Dubois celebrated his first mass here - the first said in Virginia after the Declaration of Independence, with the exception of those said in the fall and winter of 1781 in the French camp at Yorktown. Father Dubois arrived in Virginia with letters of introduction from Lafayette to James Monroe and members of the Randolph and Lee families. When he presented these in Richmond, he was permitted to use the newly completed House of Delegates chamber in the State Capitol to say mass. He was also tutored in English by Patrick Henry.
Two years after Father Dubois established Virginia's first Catholic congregation in Norfolk, the borough's population was greatly enlarged by the arrival of 137 vessels loaded to the gunwales with refugees who had fled from the Tousaint L'Ouverture slave uprising in Santo Domingo. Most of the whites, slaves and ``free persons of colour'' aboard the ships were Catholics. Joining forces with those already making up Father Dubois' congregation, they erected Norfolk's first Catholic church, the city's first racially mixed religious body, on property bought in 1794 by the ``Roman Catholic Society of Norfolk Borough.'' On that site the present Bailica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception later replaced two earlier churches built on the same location.
Since Norfolk's first Catholic congregation was established by Father Dubois in 1791, it is therefore the ``cradle of the faith in the state.'' Later, Father Dubois became the Bishop of New York.
Since its establishment 29 years before the creation of the Diocese of Virginia in 1820, Norfolk Catholics have had many outstanding pastors. The most memorable was Father Matthew O'Keefe, under whose direction the present St. Mary's was built. Besides being one of the great heroes of the 1855 yellow fever epidemic and the priest who married Gen. Douglas MacArthur's parents, O'Keefe had a keen sense of humor, which resulted in one of The Virginian-Pilot's best newsroom legends.
Michael Glennan, the editor of the Pilot's ancestor the Norfolk Virginian and a parishoner of O'Keefe, sent a Protestant reporter to St. Mary's one Saturday afternoon to collect some church news. Learning that O'Keefe was hearing confessions, the reporter - thinking that the good father was holding office hours - went into the church and waited his turn.
Finally, when he entered the confessional, he blurted out, ``Father O'Keefe, I'm a reporter on the Norfolk Virginian.''
``That's very easily forgiven, my son,'' O'Keefe replied with a chuckle. ``What other grievous sins do you have to confess?'' by CNB