Father Drumgoole, Friend of the Homeless Child

Today marks the death of Father John Drumgoole (1816-1888). Born in County Longford, Ireland, his father died when he was very young, and his mother had gone to America to find a better life for them. At age eight he traveled to New York by himself to meet up with his mother, who was working as a housemaid, in New York. He always wanted to be a priest, but he had to leave school at age fourteen to support his mother, working as a cobbler and sacristan for St, Mary’s Church on Grand Street in Manhattan. sexton. But he never gave up on the priesthood, and after his mother’s death he enrolled in the seminary. In 1869, at age 52, he was ordained a priest for the New York archdiocese.

At the time, New York City had somewhere in the area of forty thousand homeless children, and Father Drumgoole approached his Archbishop about creating what we would today call a “virtual parish” for them. He created the Newsboys’ Home for these children. In 1881, with the help of a group of Franciscan nuns, he founded the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin for the Protection of Homeless and Destitute Children, located on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones Streets. To raise money for this work he founded the St. Joseph’s Union, a support group whose members donated annual dues, and published The Homeless Child Magazine. In 1882 he purchased three farms in Staten Island, which he named Mount Loretto. It became one of the largest orphanages in the United States, staffed by eighty nuns.

Father Drumgoole died during the Blizzard of 1888 visiting the poor. His death certificate listed that he died of pneumonia and exhaustion.