Washington Pastor, Shakespearean: Monsignor Denis J. Stafford (1860-1908)

DENIS J. STAFFORD
STAFFORD, DENIS, J., D.D., Roman Catholic priest, Shakespearean scholar and lecturer, was born in Washington, District of Columbia, in 1860. His father was a prominent contractor, a man of high character and of marked business ability. His mother was a woman of deep piety who gave much of her time to religious services.

He studied in the schools of Washington, and later at the Niagara University, Niagara Falls, New York. His active work as a priest was begun at Cleveland, Ohio, where he was ordained in 1885. He afterward took an advanced course of study at Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, where his high attainments in scholarship secured for him the degree of D.D. For several years he served with great acceptance at St. Peter’s Church in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1892 he was transferred by Cardinal Gibbons to St. Patrick’s Church, in Washington, District of Columbia, where he still remains. His congregations are large, and not infrequently when he preaches people are unable to find even standing room in the church. His ability and eloquence attract many hearers from outside his own parish.

While he is famed as a preacher he is still more widely known as a lecturer. He is a devoted student of the principal plays of Shakespeare, and is held by his admirers to be one of the finest interpreters of the chief characters in the most famous of these plays. In addition to great dramatic ability he has remarkable command of language; and his voice, sweet, powerful, and under perfect control, adds to the charm of his finished elocution. Although he makes a specialty of Shakespearean studies and interpretation, he also lectures upon theological, philosophical, political, and historical subjects. He has addressed large meetings of Young Men’s Christian Associations, of Jews, and of professed unbelievers in religion, as well as great audiences composed of Catholics and Protestants; and at important public meetings in Washington, in which representative men of the city participate, his services as a speaker are in demand.

Merrill E. Gates, Men of Mark in America: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies of Eminent Living Americans (1906).

St. Patrick’s Church, Washington, D.C., as it appeared during Monsignor Stafford’s pastorate.

NOTE
Monsignor Denis J. Stafford was Pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, Washington, D.C., from 1901 to 1908. The parish was founded in 1794 to meet the needs of Irish immigrants working on the national capitol. It is located directly across the street from Ford’s Theater, the site of the Lincoln assassination in April 1865. Father Jacob Walter, pastor at the time, heard the confession of Mary Surratt and accompanied her to her execution.

Such was Monsignor Stafford’s fame as a Shakespearean interpreter that he was said to have rejected an offer of $50,000 to appear on Broadway. His funeral Mass was attended by a myriad of diplomats, congressmen, senators, Supreme Court Justices, ministers, rabbis, and the Vice President of the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a note exprerssing his inability to attend and praising the priest’s record.

The “D.D.” referred to above is a Doctor of Divinity degree, a purely honorary one usually reserved for bishops. However, there is no record of Georgetown ever having awarded such degrees during the nineteenth century. (The school did possess a pontifical charter allowing it to award theology degrees, but didn’t use it much if at all.)