page_title: William Matthews (priest)
section_title: St. Peter's Church
hierarchical_section_title: William Matthews (priest) / Priesthood / St. Peter's Church
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Peter's Catholic Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC
context_page_description: William Matthews, occasionally spelled Mathews, was an American Roman Catholic priest from the colonial Province of Maryland who became the fifth Catholic priest ordained in the United States and the first such person born in British America. He was briefly a novice in the Society of Jesus, and became influential in establishing Catholic parochial and educational institutions in Washington, D.C. He was the second pastor of St. Patrick's Church for most of his life and was the sixth president of Georgetown College, later known as Georgetown University. Matthews acted as president of the Washington Catholic Seminary, which became Gonzaga College High School, and oversaw the continuity of the school during suppression by the church and financial insecurity.
  Matthews was vicar apostolic and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Philadelphia during a period of ecclesiastical turmoil. He was a co-founder and president of the Washington Library Company for thirteen years—the first public library in the District of Columbia—and was co-director and trustee of the District of Columbia Public Schools, where he was one of the superintendents of a school.
context_section_description: In 1820, Archbishop Carroll tasked Matthews with establishing the second Catholic parish in Washington: St. Peter's Church. While construction started on a church building, the project quickly ran out of money and went into debt. Matthews ensured that the project was completed. He decided a new site should be chosen and secured a donation of land on Capitol Hill by Daniel Carroll. The church was eventually completed in 1821.
  He opposed the control of St. Peter's Church properties by lay trustees, as the issue of trusteeism was still active in American Catholic Church. This opposition motivated his subsequent selection for an ecclesiastical mission in Philadelphia.
  In 1821, the Propaganda Fide in Rome removed Norfolk, Virginia from the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, placing it within the new Diocese of Richmond. This upset Matthews, who arranged for Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore to use the diplomatic pouch of the French ambassador to the United States to express his misgivings; the ambassador would deliver the archbishop's letters to French ministers to the Holy See, who would present the communications. This would have provided some weightiness to Maréchal's petitions, but it is unclear if he made use of this arrangement.
caption: St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill, completion of whose former building Matthews oversaw
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