The Irish ‘Saint’ of New Immigrants

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Sidewalks with Tom Deignan

The Irish ‘Saint’ of New Immigrants

February 28, 2008

by Tom Deignan

REVEREND Paul Jervis was born in Guyana, and now administers a Roman Catholic Church located on the hardscrabble streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Jervis and St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic Church serve a diverse array of immigrant and African American parishioners.

He is aware that New York has a long tradition of immigration, and is shedding new light on the best, and worst, of New York’s complicated racial and ethnic past.

Jervis’ work has focused on the unlikely founder of Brooklyn’s first parish for black Catholics –- Monsignor Bernard Quinn, born in Newark to Irish immigrant parents.

Jervis is spearheading an effort to canonize Quinn as a saint. Last month, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio officially kicked off the canonization process.

Members of the extended Quinn family attended a special Mass said in honor of Quinn, who died in 1940. Quinn’s name has since been sent to the Vatican to be considered for sainthood.

Quinn’s impact on New York’s new immigrants and his efforts to promote tolerance are particularly interesting to review these days, given how immigration and race have affected the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic.

Right now, it is Ireland itself struggling with new immigrants who look and speak unlike anyone who has ever strolled the lanes of Dublin or Cork.

This week, The New York Times reminded readers that new immigration remains a burning issue in Ireland. The paper published a lengthy article about a boy born in Cork, whose parents were illegal immigrants to Ireland, and thus, may be deported.

“Thousands of Irish children face similar risks, living in a country where one or both parents do not legally reside. Their stories find abundant parallels in the United States, where an estimated five million children — including three million American citizens — have parents who are illegal immigrants,” the Times reported.

This comes as some of Ireland’s brightest minds continue to grapple with the long term impact of immigration.

In his late 2007 book Ireland Now: Tales of Change from the Global Island (Notre Dame), Professor William Flanagan described the disorientation experienced by an Irish American tourist in western Ireland.

“Everywhere he stopped Pakistanis or Indians were running the shops and hotels. There were people with Eastern European accents.” Eventually, the befuddled tourist asks, “What’s become of Ireland?”

As an answer of sorts, acclaimed novelist Roddy Doyle recently published The Deportees, his first collection of stories in which The Commitments author sets out to answer some questions about immigration and Ireland.

Meanwhile, here in America, much attention is often paid to how the Irish and African Americans have clashed, whether we are talking about the New York Draft Riots of the 1860s or the Boston bussing crisis of the 1970s.

Quinn himself opened St. Peter Claver Church because black parishioners were more or less barred from the heavily Irish and Italian parishes of Brooklyn at the beginning of the 20th century.

No one knew more about intolerance than Quinn himself. After becoming a priest in 1912, he served in World War I and was exposed to mustard gas. When he returned to Brooklyn and saw the racism and poor living conditions in black neighborhoods, he sought to open a parish which served them.

He eventually named it after Peter Claver, the Spanish Jesuit who is the patron saint of slaves and African Americans. He also opened an orphanage on Long Island, but that was burned down by men supposedly belonging to the Ku Klux Klan.

Another orphanage was burned down before Quinn successfully established the Little Flower House of Providence, which is still serving people today as the Little Flower Children’s Service at Wading River.

Quinn died at the age of 52, likely because of his exposure to mustard gas during the war. It has been said that 8,000 people came out to honor him when Quinn died in 1940.

Now, it is a black immigrant priest who is working to bring attention to Quinn’s groundbreaking work. During a heated election battle, and during a time of intense debate over immigration in the U.S. and Ireland, the noble efforts of both Jervis and Quinn are worth considering.

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