St. Joseph's Church (Staten Island, New York)

The Church of St. Joseph
General information
Town or city Rossville, Staten Island, New York City, New York
Country United States
Completed 1851 (for first chapel)[1]
Design and construction
Client Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York

The Church of St. Joseph is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and the oldest extant Roman Catholic church on Staten Island.[1] The nearby cemetery is the second oldest Roman Catholic cemetery on the island.[2] The church is located on Poplar Avenue in Rossville, Staten Island, New York City, New York.

Contents

Parish history

St. Joseph's was established in 1848 as a mission of St. Peter's Church by that church's pastor, the Rev. Mark Murphy.[1] Fr. Murphy celebrated the first Mass on July 2, 1848 for 58 Catholics in a house on Rossville Avenue.[1] In 1851, a small chapel dedicated to St. Joseph was completed on Poplar Avenue. The mission was upgraded to parish status in 1855 and thereby the chapel upgraded to church status with Rev. Francis DeCaro, O.F.M., being appointed as first pastor.[1] With its 1855 establishment, St. Joseph's is the third oldest of Staten Island's 36 parishes after St. Peter's and St. Mary's.[1] However, the influentially encyclical The Catholic Church in the United States, etc. Vol. 3 (1914), reports the parish establishment date as 1878.[3] In 1914, the parishioners numbered around 400, the value of the church property was $20,000 with a dept of $4,000.[3]

Pastors

St. Joseph's Cemetery

Located at the end of Barry Street, St. Joseph's Cemetery dates from the early 1850s, and is the second oldest Roman Catholic cemetery on the island.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "St. Joseph's Church in Rossville Celebrates it's 150th Anniversary", Catholic New York, July 2, 1998 (Retrieved 11 May 2011)
  2. ^ a b Forgotten NY - Cemeteries - Burial Grounds of Richmond
  3. ^ a b c Remigius Lafort, S.T.D., Censor, The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X. Volume 3: The Province of Baltimore and the Province of New York, Section 1: Comprising the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, Buffalo and Ogdensburg Together with some Supplementary Articles on Religious Communities of Women.. (New York City: The Catholic Editing Company, 1914), p.396.
  4. ^ Remigius Lafort, S.T.D., Censor, The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X. Volume 3: The Province of Baltimore and the Province of New York, Section 1: Comprising the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, Buffalo and Ogdensburg Together with some Supplementary Articles on Religious Communities of Women.. (New York City: The Catholic Editing Company, 1914), p.390.