John Thayer (priest)

For other people with the same name, see John Thayer (disambiguation).

The Reverend

John Thayer

Church| Catholic Church
Orders
Ordination| 1789
Personal details
Born| 1755

Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay

Died| February 17, 1815(1815-02-17) (aged 59–60)
Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland
Buried| Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland
Alma mater| Yale College

Ordination history of
John Thayer

| History

Priestly ordination

Date| 1789
Place| Paris, France

John Thayer (1755 – 17 February 1815) was the first native of New England ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Thayer was educated at Yale College and was a Protestant in his early life. He was ordained as a Congregationalist minister and served as a chaplain during the American Revolutionary War. While visiting Rome in 1783, he converted to the Roman Catholic faith, an act which caused a sensation in New England at the time. He credited his conversion to miracles attributed to the noted mendicant, Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived and died there in that period.[1]

Thayer studied for the priesthood with the Sulpician order in Paris, where he was ordained in 1789. Upon his return to Boston, he established a small chapel in School Street, primarily for French Catholics.[2]

After a brief stint serving the Catholic community of Boston, he left to serve the scattered Catholics of Virginia and Kentucky. He had a rather checkered career mostly because of his erratic and confrontational temperament. In 1803, he returned to Europe and finally settled in Limerick, Ireland, United Kingdom where he was much more successful in his ministry. He died there in 1815.[3]

After his death, his estate was used to found an Ursuline convent on Mount Benedict in Charlestown, Massachusetts. It was founded by the three daughters of the family with whom he lived while in Limerick. The first convent to be established in New England, it was burned down by a nativist crowd in anti-Catholic rioting in 1834.[1]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b Meehan, Thomas. "John Thayer." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 19 September 2021 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
2. ^ "Rev. John Thayer The First New England Convert Priest." The American Catholic Historical Researches, vol. 7, no. 2, American Catholic Historical Society, 1911, pp. 97–99
3. ^ "Died" (PDF). Limerick Chronicle. 17 February 1815.

## Sources

[edit]

* Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "John Thayer". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
* An Account of the Conversion of the Reverend John Thayer

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