Monsignor Bernard Quinn

The Priest Who Rebuilt What Hatred Burned

Bernard John Quinn was born in 1888 in Newark, New Jersey. Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Brooklyn in 1912, he quickly became known for his energy, his directness, and his conviction that the Church had a duty to serve all people regardless of race.

In 1922, Father Quinn founded St. Peter Claver parish in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, the borough’s first church dedicated to serving African American Catholics. Two years later he opened a parish school staffed by the Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, one of the few Black religious communities in the country. The parish became a center of worship, education, and community life for Black Catholics who had been turned away or made unwelcome at other churches.

In 1929, Quinn opened the Little Flower Orphanage for Black children in Wading River, on Long Island. The Ku Klux Klan, active on Long Island in that era, burned the orphanage to the ground. Quinn rebuilt it. The Klan burned it again. Quinn rebuilt it again, this time larger and stronger than before. He refused to be intimidated, and his parishioners and supporters rallied behind him each time.

In 1935, Quinn suffered a severe stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He continued his ministry from his sickbed for five more years, directing the parish and orphanage until his death on April 7, 1940, at the age of fifty-one. An estimated 8,000 people, Black and white, lined the streets of Brooklyn for his funeral. In 2008, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn initiated the diocesan investigation into Quinn’s life and virtues, and he was formally declared Servant of God in 2010.

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