St. John Neumann Shrine and St. Peter the Apostle

The parish of St. Peter the Apostle traces its origin to the growing German Catholic community of Philadelphia in the 1840s, which had outgrown Holy Trinity Parish at 6th & Spruce. Bishop Francis Kenrick agreed to establish a new German-speaking parish north of Vine Street if fifty families could be found to support it; lacking German-speaking priests, he turned to the Redemptorists of Baltimore, a community already ministering to German immigrants. Father Louis Cartuyvels, C.Ss.R., purchased land at what is today the corner of North Fifth Street and Girard Avenue in 1841 for $17,000, and on February 14, 1847 Bishop Kenrick dedicated the completed church, designed in 1842-43 by architect Joseph Koecker in Romanesque Revival style. The original brick-and-stone structure was later rebuilt in 1897 and clad in the distinctive Port Deposit granite that defines its present appearance. Parishioners famously dug the basement themselves after their workday, assisted by fifty volunteers from nearby St. Michael's, who had also suffered in the anti-Catholic riots of 1844 (St. Peter's itself was largely spared, the violence having been directed at Irish-Catholic targets). Early collections were meager—the first on record totaled just $1.40—but a $4,000 donation from the Leopoldine Society in Vienna sustained the fledgling congregation. The School Sisters of Notre Dame arrived in 1848 to take charge of the parish school, which at its peak ran an unusual Commercial School; they remain on staff to this day. With the founding of St. Vincent Orphan Asylum in 1855 during Bishop Neumann's administration, the German parishes of Philadelphia, led by St. Peter's, established institutions that would serve the immigrant community for generations. At the turn of the 19th century the parish counted roughly 7,500 parishioners, almost entirely German-speaking. When Bishop John Neumann died suddenly in 1860, he was buried, at his own request, in the undercroft floor directly beneath the high altar of St. Peter the Apostle, alongside his Redemptorist confreres. When the other Redemptorist remains were later moved to Holy Redeemer Cemetery, Bishop Neumann's body remained because of the veneration of the faithful at his gravesite. After Pope Paul VI beatified him during the Second Vatican Council and canonized him on June 19, 1977, the undercroft was formally designated the National Shrine of St. John Neumann. The body has been re-vested several times since, most notably in 1989 during a major renovation of the shrine (when it was clothed in Gothic-style vestments) and again on December 27, 2007, when Cardinal Justin Rigali presided over the placing of new traditional Roman vestments including a laced alb, stole, maniple, episcopal gloves and fiddleback chasuble, along with a new wax face mask. Two dramatic events punctuated the shrine's modern history. On May 13, 2009, a fire broke out in the lower church and reduced the historic pulpit to ashes, yet the body of the saint was left entirely intact; the plaster mask showed no signs of heat damage, which the pastor, Fr. Kevin Moley, C.Ss.R., publicly described as miraculous. Then, in the early morning hours of February 19, 2024, three stained-glass windows in the shrine were damaged by vandalism. Today the parish continues its founding Redemptorist mission of welcoming newcomers—the German-language Masses long ago gave way to a scheduled Spanish Mass, and the current congregation also includes Filipino, Haitian, Brazilian and Vietnamese Catholics, reflecting successive waves of immigration into Northern Liberties.