Catholic Chaplain’s Office History
Providing Spiritual and Moral Guidance
Tucked in between Cellblocks 1 and 9 near the Center of Eastern State Penitentiary is a small cluster of rooms. Warden Michael Cassidy originally designed and built them in the 1880’s as his office and they eventually became the offices for the penitentiary’s chaplains. The Catholic Chaplain’s Office, with its religious and prison-themed murals, is the most evocative and distinctive part of this space.
Inmate Lester Smith painted the murals in 1955 and signed them as “Paul Martin” to honor his favorite saints. Smith was a self-taught artist and recent convert to Catholicism when he met Eastern State’s Catholic Chaplain, Father Edwin Gallagher. Although Smith’s beautiful murals have suffered significant decay, they still offer insight into the history of Catholicism at Eastern State Penitentiary and the role of religion in the rehabilitation of inmates. (Smith was never arrested after his release from Eastern State.)
These rooms served as a makeshift chapel to host the first Catholic confirmation at Eastern State on June 7, 1903. Fifty-four hooded inmates were escorted into the space to receive communion from Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan. Rev. Michael J. Noel, S.J. and volunteers from the Catholic community were on hand to witness this historic event.
That first confirmation built on the faithful efforts of many in Philadelphia’s Catholic community. Though the Archdiocese had assigned Catholic priests to the penitentiary as early as the 1870s, these priests had restricted access to prisoners. In 1890, the nearby Church of the Gesu began to assign visiting priests to Eastern State. Visiting committees from the St. Vincent de Paul Society attended to Catholic inmates with such regularity that the Society officially formed an auxiliary organization called the American Society for Visiting Catholic Prisoners (ASVCP) in 1897.
