{"id":18210,"date":"2012-10-12T09:22:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T13:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=18210"},"modified":"2012-10-12T09:25:52","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T13:25:52","slug":"stealing-st-patrick-another-moment-in-archives-month-and-the-cincinnati-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2012\/10\/stealing-st-patrick-another-moment-in-archives-month-and-the-cincinnati-irish\/","title":{"rendered":"Stealing St. Patrick: Another Moment in Archives Month and the Cincinnati Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\"St.<\/a>It has its roots in the fact that, historically, German and Irish Catholic congregants were often at odds in Cincinnati.\u00a0 On Mt. Adams, where both Irish and German working-class families lived, there were two Catholic churches, Church of the Holy Cross for the Irish, Immaculata Church for the Germans.\u00a0 Holy Cross parish was established in 1873 to serve the Irish immigrants on the hill and Immaculata was dedicated in 1860, fulfilling a promise made to God by a fearful and distraught Archbishop John Baptist Purcell when he crossed the Atlantic on stormy, tossing seas.\u00a0 With a German congregation, Immaculata was part of Purcell\u2019s adroit handling of the ethnic differences in the 19th<\/sup> century \u00a0Cincinnati archdiocese.<\/p>\n

\"Statue<\/a>All was well for a hundred years.\u00a0 But as the neighborhood of Mt. Adams changed and religious demographics shifted, the Irish congregants of Holy Cross were notified in 1970 that their church would close and they would merge with the German parish of Immaculata Church.\u00a0 Jim Crowley, of the venerable Crowley\u2019s Pub in Mt. Adams, asked Father Wilfrid Flanery if the St. Patrick statue housed in Holy Cross Church could be moved to Immaculata so the Irish parishioners could feel more at home. \u00a0The statue was originally donated to the church in the 1920s by one James Healy.\u00a0 Father Flanery did not make the move official, but the church door was conveniently left unlocked one night.\u00a0 So on March 15, 1970, a cadre of Irishmen took the statue and moved it to their \u201cnew\u201d church.<\/p>\n

Every March since then, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, accompanied by a lively procession with bagpipe music splitting the air, \u201csteal\u201d the statue and load it on a truck for the annual St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade through downtown Cincinnati.\u00a0 In actuality, the original statue is no longer used in the parade.\u00a0 Instead, the Hibernians use one that once stood in St. Patrick\u2019s Church.\u00a0 In 2012, this St. Patrick\u2019s statue was refurbished by artists Mike Hendley and Linda Mitchell.<\/p>\n

Of course, with the patrons of Crowley\u2019s always involved in the shenanigans, there is a tale that one year when the Irish rascals absconded with the statue, a miniature was substituted in its place, safely kept for the Hibernians in a back room of the pub.\u00a0 And, as far as we know about these matters, St. Patrick has kept a fair number of snakes out of Mt. Adams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Kevin Grace It has its roots in the fact that, historically, German and Irish Catholic congregants were often at odds in Cincinnati.\u00a0 On Mt. Adams, where both Irish and German working-class families lived, there were two Catholic churches, Church … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[326,53,327,58],"class_list":["post-18210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-archives-month","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-irish-in-southwest-ohio","tag-urban-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}