On the 17th of March, St. Patrick’s Day, 1847, the church of St. Patrick’s was dedicated. The first patron of St. Patrick’s was the Rev. J.J. Connolly, who had succeeded Father Phelan at the “Recollet” when the latter had been consecrated coadjutor bishop of Kingston in 1843.
Father Connolly nobly served the typhus-stricken emigrants in 1847 for a period of six weeks or more, consigning to the silent grave more than fifty adult persons a day. At this time Father Richards and Father Morgan died martyrs of charity. In this ministration, therefore, the Seminary called in the services of five Jesuit Fathers who laboured at St. Patricks for some years till the Seminary was able to provide its own members. The Rev. J.J. Connolly left St. Patricks in 1860 for Boston, where he died three years later, on the 16th of September, 1863, at the age of forty-seven years. He was succeeded by Father Dowd, who had been transferred with Rev. Father O’Brien, McCullough and others for service here from Ireland about 1848 at the request of M. Quiblier, superior of the Seminary.
In 1887, on the occasion of Father Dowd’s celebration of his fiftieth year of priesthood, the occasion was taken by every section of the community to testify its appreciation of his work as the pastor of St. Patrick’s and as a good citizen.
He commenced the St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum, opened in November, 1851. In 1863 he established St. Bridget’s Home for the Old and Infirm and the Night Refuge for the Destitute, and in 1866-7 erected the building on Lagauchetière Street for a home and refuge. In 1872 he established the St. Patrick’s School for Girls on St. Alexander Street. In 1877 he organized the great Irish Canadian pilgrimage to Rome.
FRANCISCAN CHURCH
NOTRE DAME DE LOURDES CHURCH
THE JESUITS CHURCH AND ST. MARY’S COLLEGE