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Thursday, March 30, 2000 N©W§ The Southern Cross, Page 3 St. Patrick Church, Savannah, still remembered iron work while slating was done by M. Ganet and Sons of the same city. E. W. Daley saw to the plastering work. The church was consecrat ed with great ceremony by Savannah Bishop William Hinckley Gross, CSsR, on March 17, 1882. Earlier, a Rita H. DeLorme crowd packing the build- ings of the Central of Georgia Railroad across the street had strained to see all that was tran spiring on the speakers’ platform out side the church. Inside the newly consecrated church, members of every Irish or Catholic society in town, plus numerous clergy, religious and laity as well as the mayor and city officials, listened as Bishop H. P. Northrop, Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, preached the first homily at the new Saint Patrick’s. An elaborate music program concluded this part of the dedication, though afterwards “a very elegant dinner was given Bishop Gross and the visiting bishops and clergymen by members of Saint Patrick’s parish.” The church was described in local papers as promising to be “one of the neatest and handsomest in the state,” despite the fact that Saint Patrick’s congregation was, for the most part, made up of people of moderate cir cumstances and the building of the church had required great effort and sacrifice. Over the years, various improvements were made in the church and, in 1936, a mere four years before its battering by the hurri cane of 1940, new and more appro priate windows were installed in Saint Patrick’s featuring images of the Good Shepherd, Saint Patrick, Saint Michael, Saint Joseph, Our Lady of Lourdes, Saint Bridget, Saint Theresa, Saint Anne and Saint Joan of Arc. The windows were meant to represent the French and Irish settlers who had founded Catholicism in Savannah, and several were dedicated Saint Patrick's Church, to the memory of parishioners. During the 60-year span between the church’s erection and demolition, many outstanding clergy served Saint Patrick’s. Besides Father Thomas I. Sheehan, its pastor at the end of its days, the roster of the church’s pas tors included, Father Emmet Walsh, later Bishop of Charleston, Father P. H. McMahon, the previously men tioned Father Prendergast, Fathers Henry A. Schonhardt, J. S. McCarthy, Thomas O’Hara, amd Richard Brown, and Monsignor Joseph D. Mitchell. The old church did not “go gently” into its “dark night” of oblivion. An editorial in the Savannah Morning News in late August, 1941, noted the devotion of parishioners of Saint Patrick’s to their church and the many religious ceremonies, from marriages and baptisms to funerals, which had taken place inside its beloved walls. Said the editorialist: “On the seventeenth of March each year, the feast of the patron saint of the church, Savannahians gathered to hold the religious service that marked the celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day. All of these things went into making Savannah, before 1940 Saint Patrick’s the landmark which it was in the souls and hearts of the people. They can be forgiven a tear as they see Saint Patrick’s being tom down, making way for developments in a new age, its people gone or wor shiping in other and newer parishes.” Some brick and other materials salvaged from the razed church were slated to be used in the constmction of the new Blessed Sacrament Church and for building a rectory for the new church at Port Wentworth (Our Lady of Lourdes). Parts of the building were incorporated into Cathedral and Sacred Heart parishes as well as into Our Lady of Lourdes. Father Thomas I. Sheehan became the first pastor of the latter church. In a reminiscence printed in 1941, R. P. Daily, an historian who was the first infant to be baptized in Saint Patrick Church, bemoaned the loss of his parish church and said “it will not seem like Savannah to have the home coming person step out of the Central Depot and not see the familiar red brick of Saint Patrick’s Church.” Rita H. DeLorme is a volunteer in the Diocesan Archives. A ghost lives on the comer of Liberty Street and Martin Luther King, Jr., Boule vard— a very formidable ghost. No ordinary specter, this one, but the spirit of a durable set of buildings: Saint Patrick Church and Rectory. Photos of the old edi fices taken when they were in their prime attest to their apparent strength of structure and their pleasing design. Other photos, snapped following Savannah’s major hurricane of 1940, reveal a devastated church with a pealed-back roof. Established as a parish in 1862, Saint Patrick’s served the overflow of parishioners from the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Bishop Augustine Verot had purchased a for mer cotton warehouse sited on prop erty on the comer of what was then West Broad and Liberty Streets for $11,500. With some modifications, the church was dedicated in 1863 with a tablet on the premises attesting to its purposes as follows: “Taken from Mammon, dedicated to God under the invocation of Saint Patrick.” On hand beside Bishop Verot at the dedication was a good segment of the Irish and Catholic community of Savannah. The first pastor of Saint Patrick’s was Father Charles Clement Prendergast. His parish of some 2,000 members was drawn from Catholics who lived chiefly in the area west of Montgomery Street and included the Yamacraw district. Because the parish continued to grow, the cornerstone of a larger and more suitable church was laid on November 16, 1879. E. F. Baldwin of Baltimore, Maryland, provided the plans and Dewitt Bmyn of Savannah carried them out. Contracts were let to Jacob Ward for brickwork and John Nicholson for gas fitting. James Geddes of Baltimore provided the galvanized Pope (Continued from page 1) he left a prayer written on a piece of paper in a crevice between the stones. The prayer was the same he recited earlier in the month at the Vatican, asking God’s forgiveness for Christians who have “caused these children of yours to suffer.” The prayer was to be put on dis play at the museum at Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. Rabbi Michael Melchior, a member of the Israeli Cabinet, welcomed the pope to the wall, saying the pope’s visit confirmed the Catholic Church’s com mitment to “end the era of hatred, humiliation and persecution of the Jewish people.” He also said the time had come for all sides to “end the manipulation of the sanctity of Jerusalem for political gain.” The pope’s visit was plagued by Israelis and Palestinians using speeches to the pope to trade claims to the city as their own capital. Just before visiting the Western Wall, the pope met with the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Sheik Ikrema Sabri, who asked the pope to promote the end of “Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.” The pope told Muslim leaders at the al-Aqsa Mosque complex that the city was the common pat rimony of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Pope John Paul’s last appointment in Israel was his celebration of Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which he described as “the most hal lowed place on earth.” Before the Mass, the pope kissed the rock mark ing the place where Jesus’ dead body was anointed, then, stooping down to enter a small cave, he kissed the stone ledge of Jesus’ tomb. “The tomb is empty,” the pope said in his March 26 homily. “For almost 2,000 years the empty tomb has borne wit ness to the victory of life over death.” Another highlight for the pope was his March 25 Mass at Nazareth.“I give thanks to divine provi dence for making it possible for me to celebrate the feast of the Annunciation in this place, on this day,” said the pope. Visiting the lower level of the Basilica of the Annunciation, he held onto the altar and knelt to kiss the plaque that commemorates the place the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and “the Word was made flesh.” Nazareth has been the scene of tensions between Christians and Muslims over Muslim plans to build a mosque on a plot of land adjacent to the basilica, but all was calm on the day of the pope’s visit to Jesus’ hometown. In next week’s issue... ishop Boland’s “Accountability Report to the People,” which will contain annual financial information, will be included in the April 6 edition of The Southern Cross.