Saint Margaret’s, Morristown

The first time Mass was celebrated in Morristown, and presumably the first public (as opposed to clandestine) Mass celebrated in the State of New Jersey was on April 29, 1780 when Father Seraphin Bandol, a Franciscan French Naval chaplain, celebrated a Funeral Mass in the presence of General George Washington, his staff, and members of Congress at his headquarters in the Ford Mansion for Don Juan de Miralles, the minister of the Spanish crown to the Continental Congress, who died suddenly while visiting Washington at his Morristown encampment.

In the early nineteenth century, the few Catholics of Morristown were cared for by Saint Vincent Martyr Church in nearby Madison which had been built in 1825, and served all of northwestern New Jersey. As the number of Catholics in the area increased, the Madison pastors oversaw the building of mission churches in the larger Mass stations of Dover, Boonton, and Morristown. The Morristown church was begun in March 1848 under the leadership of Father Bernard McQuaid, later the first Bishop of Rochester. The church was named for the Assumption of Mary, and the first Mass was offered on Christmas Day, 1848. By the late 1850s, the Morristown Mission began to be cared for by priests from Seton Hall College, then located in Madison. When Seton Hall moved to South Orange in 1860, one of the priests, Father Lawrence Hoey, stayed behind to become the first resident pastor of Morristown.
 

In 1885, the pastor of Assumption, Monsignor Joseph Flynn, purchased the 10 acre Condit property on the north side of town for $25,000, intending to divide it for housing. By the end of the year, streets and housing lots for sale were laid out, and a small chapel was constructed on Bellevue Terrace and dedicated to Saint Margaret, Queen of Scotland. Over 1,000 people marched from Assumption for the dedication of the new chapel on May 31, 1885. The following year, 1886, a school was opened at the church. Five years later, in 1891, the chapel was rolled down Columba Street to the other side of the property and connected to a standing barn. In the next forty years, two additions were made to the chapel. Although Flynn’s vision of the area had a decided Celtic flavor, with a church named after a Scottish queen on a street named after an Irish saint, the area developed almost immediately into a heavily Italian neighborhood, and the pastors of Assumption saw to it that Italian-speaking priests and services were regularly available at Saint Margaret’s.

By 1930, the Catholic presence in Morristown and the surrounding area had grown to the point that Bishop Thomas Walsh of Newark was prompted to divide the parish and raise Saint Margaret’s to full parochial status with its own pastor. Once again there was a Seton Hall connection as a young dynamic priest from the college, John J. Sheerin was named first pastor. Monsignor Sheerin would remain at Saint Margaret’s for the next thirty-five years until his death in 1965. In 1934 he supervised the building of a new combination church and school, and a rectory. For the last eleven years of his life, Sheerin also served as Vicar General of the Paterson Diocese. In the 1950s, the first Cana Conferences in the diocese, a marriage enrichment program, were begun at Saint Margaret’s under the direction of Father Anthony Franchino.

Sheerin was succeeded by Monsignor Christian D. Haag, who also enjoyed a long twenty-two-year pastorate. During his service the present church was constructed in 1968, as well as a new convent, and, after a tragic fire, the rectory was also rebuilt. The new church, built in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, sparked some local controversy because the windows, illustrating the Beatitudes, included portraits of two non-Catholics, Dag Hammarskjold, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Saint Margaret’s School first opened in 1886, was staffed by the Sisters of Charity from 1888 until 1984, and by the Religious Teachers Filippini from 1984 until its closing in 1998. Saint Margaret’s has been the source of a number of vocations for the priesthood and religious life, including Monsignor Herbert Tillyer, a recent Vicar General of the diocese. More recent pastors of the parish have included Father Gregory Colucci (1987), Monsignor Thomas Zazella (1989), Monsignor Francis Duffy (1995) and Father Hernan Arias (2005), the first son of the parish to serve as its pastor.

Today, the once heavily Italian-Irish population of the parish, scattered through parts of Morristown, Morris Township, and Randolph Township, has been augmented by new waves of immigrants from virtually every nation in the Americas. Any given Mass at Saint Margaret’s today is likely to have as diverse a congregation as one can find in any of the forty-eight parishes of Morris County. Through both the English and Spanish languages, Saint Margaret’s continues what it has faithfully done for more than 125 years – to proclaim the Gospel of Christ in the midst of the greater Morristown area.