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October 28, 1829
OLD CHAPEL INSPIRES BASILICA CATHEDRAL
The young priest Father Michael Anthony Fleming was consecrated coadjutor (assistant) bishop of Newfoundland in the small Roman Catholic Church in St. John’s known as the Old Chapel by Bishop Thomas Scallan on October 28, 1829.
Fleming came to the island of Newfoundland in the autumn of 1823. For six years he served as the curate (assistant) to Bishop Scallan in St John’s. An able and energetic assistant, he took considerable responsibility for parish affairs, especially as Scallan’s health worsened. By 1824 the bishop was calling him “a real treasure.”
The old Chapel, which had served as the Catholic Cathedral for all Newfoundland for over fifty years, was a small wooden building, erected on leased land on Henry Street, where the Star of the Sea Hall now stands. Bishop Fleming described it as "a wretched building little better than an extensive stable, badly built and badly ventilated & now tottering in danger of falling and so wretchedly contracted that a considerable portion of the Congregation are compelled on the Sundays to abide the pelting of the storm, the freezing winds & drifting snows... with their heads bowed in prayer beneath Heaven's own canopy." (National Library of Ireland, P.J. Little Papers, file 140-151, document 141, draft of Fleming "To His Most Gracious Majesty King William the Fourth", undated.)
It may have been the dilapidated state of the “Old Chapel” that moved the newly minted bishop to consider building a new church. That church was to become what we now know as the Basilica Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.
For more information on this and other related subjects contact the Archives of the R.C. Archdiocese. www.stjohnsarchdiocese.nf.ca
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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
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