Saint Patrick’s Day: Irish Catholics in the Newark Archdiocese

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Did you know our Archdiocesan coat of arms has two shamrocks?

And today marks the 60th anniversary of the Bishops of Nigeria naming Saint Patrick patron of Nigeria. So, we salute our great Nigerian population in the Archdiocese.

And, of course, today we acknowledge the rich Irish Catholic history of our Archdiocese. Fun fact: Did you know there are just three churches in the Archdiocese named after Saint Patrick despite the large Irish population?

Irish were among the first wave of immigrants between 1840 and 1920. About 85 percent of the Irish immigrants were Catholics.

They came mostly out of desperation. In the 1840s, a blight destroyed the potato crop in Ireland. The resultant famine, the “Great Hunger,” killed over one million persons and drove more than one and a half million Irish to emigrate.

Click to read more about the history of immigration in the archdiocese.

In 1850, shortly before the establishment of the diocese of Newark, the bishop of New York created the city’s third parish, Saint Patrick’s (Pro-Cathedral), out of Saint John’s to meet the needs of the growing Irish population in Newark.

The Pro-cathedral has, in my opinion, the best depiction of St. Patrick in iridescent glass.

Click to read more about the history of St Patrick’s Pro-Cathedral.

Msgr. Robert J. Wister, Hist.Eccl.D. is a retired professor of church history at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, Seton Hall University, and writes historical articles for the publications of the Archdiocese of Newark.