Editor’s note: The following article honoring the 175th Anniversary of our diocese is based on a historical record written by Fr. James Francis Tierney’s “Biographical Notices of The Earliest Wheeling Priests,” when he was at Saint Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore, and archived documents of the diocese.
Trailblazing missionary priests and the determined leadership of Bishop Richard Vincent Whelan laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in WV.
Just before being ordained a priest in 1937, Fr. James Francis Tierney, wrote his dissertation for St. Mary’s Seminary about more than 70 early priests of WV, a state with the “most varied topography” and “almost unrivaled scenic beauty.”
Tierney, a native of Weston, later served parishes across West Virginia for 45 years, including Beckley, Weirton, Grant Town, Huntington, Fairmont, and Farmington.
His dissertation documented that organized parish life in Wheeling began in the early 19th century. Records show Rev. Francis Rolf performing the first recorded baptism there in 1829. For more than a decade afterward, Catholics received only intermittent pastoral care, often seeing a priest just once or twice a month as clergy traveled long circuits across the rugged western Virginia mountains. Earlier missionary efforts had centered in the Eastern Panhandle, where Irish priest Father Denis Cahill evangelized along the Potomac Valley in the late 1700s.
The Church’s presence expanded when the Diocese of Richmond Bishop Richard Vincent Whelan and Jesuit Father James Ryder brought Catholicism to the western region. The duo traveled far and wide to bring Mass and sacraments to Catholics “scattered through the territory.” As the result Whelan assigned priests to Wytheville, Summersville, and Kingwood.
By 1846, Bishop Whelan moved his base from Richmond to Wheeling, and his first recorded baptism there in the notes is dated November 2, 1846.
Call Across the Atlantic: Brutal Honesty
While the populations grew thanks to roads and rail, supplying clergy in western Virginia was becoming an impossible task. Priests were given assignments covering at least a 100-mile radius and traveled by horseback or on foot. Bishop Whelan was also exhausting the hospitality of bordering priests and knew he had to attract priests and seminarians from outside of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
So, putting pen to paper, he wrote to seminaries in Ireland and France, knowing he had to be brutally honest to attract young men who not only embraced a strong relationship with Christ, but also a strong backbone to endure the hardships required. His recruitment pitch to All Hallows Seminary in Dublin, Ireland said:
“Catholics are very few and generally very scattered… a priest may have a circuit of 100 miles in diameter… (This country is) exceedingly mountainous, with bad roads, and a very uncultivated population. (Any missionary) must expect a life of great labour and fatigue, much exposure to the cold, heat, and rain… a very indifferent diet, and lodging, but little respect for his dignity… a compensation barely adequate to support him….
“I wish no one to be taken by surprise …if they select my Diocese, I shall regard their character and honor compromised if afterwards they flinch, and I shall even refuse an exeat where there is no other good controlling motive.”
And with that, strong willed, evangelizing priests came. They took him seriously; seminarians and priests came and continued for more than 180 years.
The Diocese of Wheeling
In 1850, the Holy See granted Whelan’s repeated request to divide the Richmond diocese (which was formerly part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore until 1820) to create the Diocese of Wheeling with Whelan installed as its first bishop at the age of 41. The Eastern panhandle remained part of the Diocese of Richmond (prior to 1820 it was part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore).
The diocese quickly grew—from about 7,000 Catholics and a dozen churches in the mid-1850s to nearly 20,000 Catholics and more than forty churches by 1870.
Bishop Whelan’s In-House Seminary
It would take time for the Irish priests to come, so Bishop Whelan’s task of securing priests for the region would continue to be difficult. So, the forward-thinking bishop rolled up his sleeves and worked on a solution, opening a seminary in his home in the early 1850s.
It was the second time the gritty young bishop opened a seminary. The first – St. Vincent Seminary – was opened in Richmond. However, diocesan administrators there insisted it have a large property and new facilities. Those hefty costs were to the seminary’s demise, and it closed soon after its inception because of lack of funding.
The Wheeling seminary trained future priests for more than 20 years.
There were four seminarians in its first year. He wasn’t going to accept just anyone. His notes stated, “none need apply who cannot produce the strongest recommendations for piety and ability.”
In addition to their studies, the seminarians taught children in the cathedral school. Among its notable graduates were Fr. Henry F. Parke, ordained in 1851 and would go on to serve as Vicar General for the Wheeling diocese; and Monsignor Thomas A. Quirk ordained in 1870 by Whelan and quickly become known to be much like his servant leader, knowing no limits – doing whatever it took to bring Christ to the most remote areas to build up the Church.
In a late 1800’s sermon about Bishop Whelan, Fr. Joseph W. Stenger said, Bishop Richard Vincent Whelan combined personal strength, high standards, and “stern virtues”. However, he also maintained a Christ like compassion, showing mercy when others only criticized them and him. Even if the recipient was ingrateful, the thick-skinned bishop continued to give the lost soul grace, even priests. Going on to say, “neither the remonstrances (objections) of his own priests, nor the opinion of others, nor even the ingratitude of the unworthy man who abused his goodness, had the slightest effect in extinguishing… this nobly folly (seemingly foolish but admirable mercy toward sinners).”
Profiles of Pioneering Priests by Tierney
Very Rev. Henry F. Parke, born in Ireland in 1823, immigrated to America as a young man and converted to Catholicism after meeting an Irish priest, Father Edward Fox, in Wytheville, who encouraged him to enter the priesthood. His initial assignments stretched from Wheeling to Wytheville before he was named Vicar General and the pastor for the Catholic families in Parkersburg. He served St. Francis Xavier in Parkersburg for much of his life until his final years he served at Mt. de Chantal in Wheeling. Upon the death of Bishop Whelan on July 7, 1874, Fr. Parke served as administrator of the diocese until Bishop John Kain was installed as the diocese’s second bishop.
He was described as “a small little man… extremely active; he was an engaging conversationalist…. An instance of his charity is given in connection with a small-0pox epidemic in Parkersburg, when Father Parke is known to have baptized, fed, and cared for a victim; and then finally with his own hands had to bury him.”
Father Parke died tragically on Holy Thursday, April 9, 1895. On his way to Chrism Mass at the Cathedral a brick wall collapsed and killed him.
Monsignor Thomas A. Quirk was born in Clonmel, County of Tipperary, in southern Ireland, on March 7, 1844. He was educated in England before coming to America. He was in seminarian studies at St. Sulpice in Paris, when he met Bishop Whelan. He was the only seminarian there to commit to the Diocese of Wheeling. After his ordination in Wheeling on August 31, 1870, Fr. Quirk served in Wheeling at the Cathedral for his first nine months before going to serve in Parkersburg, Guyandotte and Huntington. The latter he wrote, “There was no church in Huntington when I got there; we had Mass in the roundhouse and in a shanty. Neither was there any available money. I went to a lumber dealer and explained. He answered that I was to have all the materials I wanted. Thus, within six months I had a church and school; the church was used for twenty years….” He served the Huntington faithful for 12 years, purchasing the property for the present-day St. Joseph Church prior to his departure.
From there he served in Lewis County. The people loved and respected him as the man who built the Church in those hills from the ground up. Even in his 90s, he was described as “one of the ablest and most remarkable priests ever in the Wheeling Diocese, or… our whole country.”
The Legacy
From scattered missions to vibrant parishes, the Church in West Virginia grew through the enduring power of grit and grace. These pioneering priests met every hardship with courage and every challenge with faith, trusting that God would guide their work. Today their legacy remains alive in every Mass celebrated and every soul drawn closer to Christ. May their spirit continue to inspire the Church for generations to come.
