A Church of Firsts
Founded in 1840, the Church of St. Philip Neri became the ninth Catholic church in Philadelphia and its neighboring districts, joining Old St. Joseph (1733), Old St. Mary (1763), Holy Trinity (1788), St. Augustine (1796), St. John the Evangelist (1830), St. Michael (1831), St. Francis Xavier (1839) and St. Patrick (1839). It is one of the most historic institutions in the city of Philadelphia:
- It was the first church in the Philadelphia Archdiocese to be founded as a free church—relying on freewill contributions instead of pew rentals and annual fees, which were customarily collected from parishioners at other Catholic and Protestant churches, both in Europe and America.
- The Church of St. Philip Neri was the first commission of Eugene Napoleon LeBrun (1821-1901), a well-known Philadelphia architect, who designed the church at the age of 18. He would go on to design Philadelphia’s Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul and the Academy of Music.
- The first free Catholic school in the Philadelphia Archdiocese—one of the seeds of what would later become the parochial school system in the United States—was opened at the Church of St. Philip Neri in 1841. Staffed originally by lay teachers, the school became one of the first in the nation to be taught by nuns, originally by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and in 1850 by the Sisters of St. Joseph.
- The first diocesan program of the Forty Hours Devotion in the United States began at the Church of St. Philip Neri on May 26, 1853. On that date, the Feast of Corpus Christi, Bishop John Neumann (1811-1860)—now St. John Neumann—introduced the devotion at our church in honor of our patron, St. Philip Neri, who had introduced the Forty Hours Devotion in Rome three centuries before.
- The Church of St. Philip Neri is historic for its unwelcome role as the focal point of the most violent Nativist riots in Philadelphia. The Southwark riots of 1844, with our church at its epicenter, marked the first time in our city’s history that government troops were forced to raise arms against civilians to maintain public order.
