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August 15, 1864
FISHING FOR THE CHURCH ON “LADY DAY”
On August 14, 1864 Bishop John Thomas Mullock, the Roman Catholic Bishop of St. John’s “called on the people of the St. John’s area to fish for St. Patrick’s Church tomorrow”. (August 15). Bishop Mullock was so determined to get the fishermen up and out fishing at an early hour that he put on a special mass in the Cathedral (now the Basilica) at 4:00 a.m. “for the people going to fish…”
August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary was one of the great feast days in the calendar of the Catholic Church, celebrating the Church's belief that at the end of her life on earth, the Virgin Mother of God was taken up, body and soul, into Heaven, where she is Mother of the Church as well as the Mother of God. So important was this day that it was considered a Holy Day of Obligation, demanding that faithful attend Mass. This practice or obligation has been abandoned over the past twenty years or so.
“LADY DAY” IN NEWFOUNDLAND
In Newfoundland and Labrador, August 15 is better known as Lady Day. On August 15 there is a long established tradition that the “catch of fish” on this day was to be given over to the church. When the Roman Catholic Cathedral (now Basilica) was being constructed Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming of the Island of Newfoundland received in 1834 from Pope Gregory XVI, the faculty to dispense the fishermen subject to his spiritual jurisdiction from the obligation of fasting on the vigils of saints. This allowed Bishop Fleming to give permission to the fishermen to fish for the church on holy days, like Lady Day. Bishop Fleming referred to himself as “the prelate of a congregation of impoverished fishermen.”
With the completion of the R.C. Cathedral in 1855 all the energies of the Newfoundland Bishop and clergy were directed towards building St. Patrick’s Church in St. John’s.
On February 7, 1864, work officially began on St. Patrick’s with the construction the foundation from stone taken from the Southside Hills (at Cudahy's Quarry). Construction continued as funds and materials permitted most of it raised from the catch of the noble fishermen. After more than two-and-a-half decades, St. Patrick's Church was consecrated on August 28, 1881.
Most Reverend John Hughes, Archbishop of New York and Bishop John T. Mullock of St. John’s laid the cornerstone of St. Patrick’s Church on September 10, 1855. The church was designed in the late Gothic Revival, also termed Neo-Gothic, style by J.J. McCarthy, a prominent Irish architect, and was built by T. O'Brien, local architect and mason.
In 1997 the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador declared St. Patrick's Church a Registered Heritage Structure. St. Patrick's Church was declared a National Historic Site by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada on June 26, 2005.
We hope that you have enjoyed this “archival moment.”
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Larry Dohey
Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s
P.O. Box 1363
St. John’s, NL
A1C 5M3
709-726-3660
E-mail: archives@nf.aibn.com
We hope that you have enjoyed this archival moment.
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