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St. Mary's Roman Catholic
Church
CHARLESTON
About 1786 a vessel bound for South America,
having an Italian priest aboard, put into Charleston. This
priest gathered a congregation of some twelve persons and held
mass. This service is regarded as the introduction of the
Catholic religion to the states of North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia. The history of St. Mary's is the
history of the Roman Catholic religion in the Southeast,
excluding the Florida possessions of the Spanish. Prior to the
Revolutionary War there were few Roman Catholics in
Charleston, and these had no ministry.
St. Mary's
Church was organized in 1794, and in 1798 bought a frame
building from a Protestant congregation. In 1836 this building
was burned, and on the same site the present structure was
erected, being completed in 1838. It is a very fine brick
edifice, with memorial stained glass windows. Exquisite murals
representing the stations of the cross are an outstanding
feature of the interior.
The family of Count de Grasse
sleep in the interesting graveyard of which Bishop John M.
England, who came to Charleston in l820, wrote: "The cemetery
of this church which is now in the center of the city affords
in the inscriptions of its monuments the evidence of the
catholicity of those whose ashes it contains. You may lind the
American and the European side by side."
The congregations
of the Catholic churches composing the dioceses of North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia think of this
organization as their "Mother Church".
BY
HAZEL CROWSON SELLERS
South Carolina Churches
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