St. Aloysius Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic parish church at 19 I Street in the Near Northeast neighborhood of Washington, D. C. It is administered by the Jesuits since its founding and is named for St. Aloysius Gonzaga. It is often associated with Gonzaga College High School, to which it is physically connected. The church building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2012 the parish was closed and merged with Holy Redeemer church.[3]
The church building was constructed in 1859 and catered to many of the Irish Catholics that resided in the surrounding neighborhoods, particularly Swampoodle.
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.
On September 9, 1862, three years after the church was dedicated, the District of Columbia's military governor made a requisition to Father Wiget to use the church as a military hospital. This was at height of the Civil War and shortly after the Second Battle of Bull Run. 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.[4]
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.
St. Aloysius Catholic Church hosts a Mass for Immigrants on March 21, 2010, before the March for America.
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 parish merged with Holy Redeemer Church and the church was maintained and used by Gonzaga College 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.[5]
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 16th century. Gonzaga is the oldest boys' high school in the District of Columbia.
Sursum Corda is a small neighborhood located in Washington, D.C., bounded by North Capitol Street on the east, K Street NW to the south, New Jersey Avenue NW to the west, and New York Avenue NW to the north.
Constantino Brumidi was a Greek-Italian-American historical painter, best known and honored for his fresco work, Apotheosis of Washington, in the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.
The Oxford Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga is the Catholic parish church for the centre of Oxford, England. It is located at 25 Woodstock Road, next to Somerville College. The church is served by the Congregation of the Oratory.
Horace B. McKenna, S.J. was an American Catholic priest, founder of S.O.M.E., and advocate of the Sursum Corda Cooperative.
Frederick George Holweck was a German-American Catholic parish priest and scholar, hagiographer and church historian. Monsignor Holweck contributed some articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
St. Aloysius of Gonzaga Church is a Roman Catholic church in Nashua, New Hampshire, United States. The church is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire.
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St. Ignatius Church is a historic Catholic church in Baltimore, Maryland within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Established and administered by the Society of Jesus, the church is dedicated to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the order's founder. It is located at 740 N. Calvert St in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, north of downtown Baltimore, and is considered the city’s center of history and culture.
Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church is a Catholic parish church located at 2436 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The parish was founded on August 4, 1867, and the first church building consecrated and used for worship on December 27, 1868. This brick structure closed on July 15, 1959, and the current new building was consecrated and first used for worship on June 11, 1961. The church was a favorite of President John F. Kennedy.
William Matthews, occasionally spelled Mathews, was an American who became the fifth Roman Catholic priest ordained in the United States and the first such person born in British America. Born in the colonial Province of Maryland, he was briefly a novice in the Society of Jesus. After being ordained, he became influential in establishing Catholic parochial and educational institutions in Washington, D.C. He was the second pastor of St. Patrick's Church, serving for most of his life. He served as the sixth president of Georgetown College, later known as Georgetown University. Matthews acted as president of the Washington Catholic Seminary, which became Gonzaga College High School, and oversaw the continuity of the school during suppression by the church and financial insecurity.
Charles William Lyons was an American Catholic priest who became the only Jesuit and likely the only educator in the United States to have served as the president of four colleges. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he attended the local public schools before entering the wool industry. He abandoned his career in industry to enter the Society of Jesus. While a novice in Maryland, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Georgetown University as prefect. He then resumed his studies at Woodstock College, teaching intermittently at Gonzaga College in Washington, D.C. and Loyola College in Baltimore. After his ordination, he became a professor at St. Francis Xavier College in New York City and at Boston College.
Charles Henry Stonestreet was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served in prominent religious and academic positions, including as provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland Province and president of Georgetown University. He was born in Maryland and attended Georgetown University, where he co-founded the Philodemic Society. After entering the Society of Jesus and becoming a professor at Georgetown, he led St. John's Literary Institution and St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Maryland. He was appointed president of Georgetown University in 1851, holding the office for two years, during which time he oversaw expansion of the university's library. The First Plenary Council of Baltimore was held at Georgetown during his tenure.
Arthur Aloysius O'Leary was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit, who served as president of Georgetown University in from 1935 to 1942. Born in Washington, D.C., he studied at Gonzaga College before entering the Society of Jesus and continuing his education at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and Woodstock College. He then taught at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and Georgetown University, where he eventually became the university's librarian, and undertook a major improvement of the Georgetown University Library. O'Leary then assumed the presidency of the university in the midst of the Great Depression and, later, World War II.
William Francis Clarke was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who held several senior positions at Jesuit institutions in Maryland and Washington, D.C. Born in Washington, he descended from several early colonial families of Maryland. He was educated at Gonzaga College and its successor institutions during the suppression of the Society of Jesus, followed by Georgetown College. After his entrance into the Jesuit order, he taught for several years at Georgetown, and became the pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Baltimore, where he took uncommon measures to integrate black Catholics and Italian immigrants into parish life.
Edward Ignatius Devitt was a Canadian American priest, Jesuit, and historian of the American Catholic Church. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, he moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts, at a young age. He studied in public schools in the city before enrolling at the College of the Holy Cross. Devitt spent two years there, and then entered the Society of Jesus in 1859. He studied at the novitiate in Frederick, Maryland, and at the newly opened Woodstock College. He briefly taught at the Washington Seminary during his studies, and after graduating, was a professor for the next thirty years at Holy Cross, Woodstock, and Georgetown University.
James Clark was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who led the College of the Holy Cross during the American Civil War as president from 1861 to 1867. Born in Pennsylvania, he was educated at the United States Military Academy and served as an officer in the U.S. Army for one year, before converting to Catholicism and later entering the Society of Jesus.
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