“From the Archives” Father Patrick Francis Healy, S.J.

Father Patrick Francis Healy, S.J., served as a priest here at Saint Mary parish shortly after the end of the U.S. Civil War. His family certainly ranks as one of the most interesting Catholic families in 19th century America.

His father, Michael Healy, was an Irish ship captain who emigrated to Connecticut and became a cotton planter in Georgia. There he met Mary Eliza Smith, the young slave of a business acquaintance. Attracted by her refinement and virtuous character, Healy bought her freedom and made her his common-law wife in 1829. Interracial marriages were illegal in Georgia. While the Catholic Church did recognize interracial marriages, there were no priests in Macon County at that time to officiate at a Catholic wedding.

Born in 1834, Patrick was the second of the couple’s four sons. Because their mother was black, the children were legally slaves and prohibited from attending school in Georgia. Anxious to provide for his children, Michael Healy sent them to school in New York and Massachusetts. At Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, the Healy brothers came under the tutelage of Father George Fenwick, who baptized them. Three became Jesuit priests—James became bishop of Portland, Maine (the first black Catholic bishop in the United States); Sherwood became Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Boston; and Patrick, a brilliant young man, was sent to study in Rome and Louvain, Belgium. Three of the five Healy daughters became nuns in Canada. After returning to the United States in 1866, Father Patrick Healy taught philosophy at Georgetown University when Washington, D.C. was still a Southern city with Southern sympathies. While the Jesuits were aware of his mixed race, they did not hesitate to appoint him to a position. He fit gracefully into Washington society. In fact, he baptized his friend Julia Gardner Tyler, widow of ex-President John Tyler, and her daughter and granddaughter.

In 1869, Father Healy was assigned to serve as a priest in Alexandria. Since the city was the home of Robert E. Lee and the parish was filled with Confederate veterans and sympathizers, the environment must have been uncomfortable for a mixed-race priest during his tenure here.

Father Healy became president of Georgetown in 1873. During his nine years in that positon, he broadened the curriculum from the classics to a full-scale college emphasizing mathematics, the sciences and English literature, beginning the transformation of the school into a modern university. He died January 10, 1910, in Washington, D.C.

— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian

Throughout 2020, the Basilica of Saint Mary will present “From the Archives.” It is a weekly feature online and in our bulletin spotlighting the history of the parish. All of our “From the Archives” features are located here.