Of late, I have been sifting and rummaging through the Forgotten NY archives. Over the course of a quarter century, a lot of pictures can fall by the wayside. In December 2011 I made one of my very few forays into the south end of Richmond Hill, just west of Jamaica, and so for a few posts will be sharing some of these never-used images. On 118th Street between 95th and Atlantic Avenues, I encountered what is reportedly the only Catholic parish on the globe dedicated to Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783).
Saint Benedict, born into a wealthy family in northern France, was the oldest son of what some accounts have as 15 children, others 18. His father was a merchant, while his uncle was a priest. He was called to monastic life and applied to the Trappists, but they rejected him for his youth and delicate constitution; monastic life can be taxing. After applying without success to other orders, Benedict joined the Third Order of Saint Francis and settled upon a life of poverty in which he would make his way around Europe, surviving on alms. He visited the various shrines in Loreto, Assisi, Naples, and Bari in Italy, Einsiedeln in Switzerland, Paray-le-Monial in France, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Though he preached occasionally, he spoke but little and spent his time, wherever he went, in prayer. He shared what food he had with fellow mendicants, as wanderers were known. During the last decade of his life, he was a well-known figure as he resided outside the Roman Colosseum. He died in 1783 of malnutrition and exhaustion; he was canonized nearly a century later, in 1881, with his feast day April 16, as patron saint of the homeless.
The Richmond Hill parish dedicated to Benedict Joseph Labre originated in what was then called Morris Park in 1892, with a still-standing brick school building in 1913 and the present Romanesque beauty in 1919.
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10/29/22
4 comments
Needless to say but the school is no longer operating.
And why?They cant get any more nuns to operate it!
And lay teachers dont want to work there.The pay is too
low.
There’s a Catholic high school in Montana, serving Native American students, that’s named after him.
St. Benedict Joseph Labre may have only one parish named for him, but shortly after his canonization, a school for children of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribal people was established in his name in 1884. St. Labre was considered to be the appropriate patron for the people whose children were to be taught and cared for, as at that time, those particular bands of those peoples in that part of Montana were not on any reservation, and were wanderers.
Isn’t there are branch of the Queensboro Public Labre a few blocks away?