The Feast of St. Patrick is a special day for the Archdiocese of New York.

The festivities we see today sprang out of centuries of pious devotion to St. Patrick and the pride of Irish immigrants who settled here.

These immigrants brought their devotion to their patron saint to the New World and right into the heart of New York City.

St. Patrick was chosen as the patron saint of the Archdiocese of New York and the Cathedral named for him stands as a beacon of the religious freedom that so many immigrants fled their homelands to find.

Before this Cathedral opened its doors in 1879, the first seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, was here at the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral, located in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood.

Today the locals call it simply, Old St. Patrick’s. The history within its walls tells the story of Catholicism in America and the fight for religious freedom.

The Cathedral’s official historian Richard McCann tells us more: