Qualla: Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.)

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. At 10:30 on the night of November 22, 1963, the telephone rang at the rectory of Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The caller was Ralph Dungan, special assistant to the president, and he needed candlesticks. By morning, President Kennedy's body would lie in repose in the East Room of the White House, and the staff hurriedly assembling the catafalque needed four large wooden candlesticks and two prie-dieux for the priests who would maintain a vigil through the night. Father John Wintermyer, an assistant pastor, said yes. The candlesticks and the kneelers were driven over from the parish where Kennedy regularly attended Mass during his presidency. They flanked the closed coffin in every photograph taken in the East Room that weekend. In January 1964, the White House sent six small bronze plaques back, to be affixed in commemoration. The parish keeps them still.

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): A West End Parish

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. Saint Stephen's was founded on August 4, 1867, the ninth Catholic parish in a city whose Catholic population was growing faster than its churches could be built. Reverend C.I. White of St. Matthew's bought a corner lot at 24th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue from a Dr. Newman for ...

Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): The Kennedy Pew

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. John and Jacqueline Kennedy attended Mass at Saint Stephen's regularly during his presidency, drawn by its convenience to the White House and the comparative privacy a parish church offered compared to St. Matthew's Cathedral. After the assassination, the Catholic War Veterans of...

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): Parabolic Vaults

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. The current building is not the brick church of 1868. By the late 1950s the Cluss structure had grown unsafe; in the spring of 1959 part of the ceiling collapsed after a load-bearing pillar failed, and structural engineers concluded that reinforcement would only postpone the inev...

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): The Visco Doors

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. On November 20, 2011, Auxiliary Bishop Barry Knestout blessed the new main doors of Saint Stephen Martyr as workers installed them. The doors, designed by Philadelphia artist Anthony Visco, are oak with three bronze panels. The central panel depicts the stoning of Stephen, the de...

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.): A Long Quiet History

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. Aside from the Kennedy weekend, Saint Stephen's history reads like that of most American Catholic parishes - a long succession of priests, debts paid down and incurred again, school openings and closings. Father McNally, the first pastor, served twenty-two years and died of a str...

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0