Today marks the 125th anniversary of the chapel at Richmond Hill. The beautiful sanctuary was built in 1894 during the Jim Crow era, a time of legally sanctioned racial segregation, terror and violence in the United States. The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument that was put on nearby Libby Hill around same time was intended to be a dramatic symbol of the south’s intent to rise again following its defeat in the Civil War. The Jim Crow laws were enforced until the 1960s when diverse protesters, not so very different than the multi-cultural Black Lives Matter protesters we see today, nonviolently demanded change — forcing an end to the humiliation of segregation and winning the right to vote for African Americans.
While we can acknowledge that the Sisters of the Visitation of Monte Maria were brought from Baltimore to Richmond to help with the restoration of life in Richmond, in particular, the re-establishment and rebuilding of the Catholic Church and to build a girls’ school, that they were working for racial healing and reconciliation in the city is unclear. The Catholic Church itself enslaved many African Americans and Bishop Joseph McGill who brought the Sisters to Richmond was widely recognized as a Confederate sympathizer. The primary donor for the construction of this chapel was Ida Barry Ryan, wife of Thomas Fortune Ryan, a banker and financier and the 10th richest person in the country when he died in 1928. When he and his younger brother were just teenagers, they were the owners of three enslaved individuals. Ida, born Ida Mary Barry, used the sizable sum of money she inherited at her father’s death to build and renovate many Catholic institutions, though she made this explicit caveat: none of her funds could be used for “colored work” including schools and hospitals for Virginia’s freed blacks. Nonetheless, Pope Pious X gave her the cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for distinguished service to the Catholic Church.
We lift up the painful history associated with the initial funding of this chapel. We lift it up in order to reckon with it as part of Richmond Hill’s renewed mission of racial reconciliation, a mission that calls for sustained action on racial justice issues.
