Even amid so much else competing for your attention
around Christopher Street, St. Veronica’s Roman Catholic Church imposes itself. So much of it, at least when I walked by in mid-January on the way to photograph the Hudson River waterfront a couple of blocks away, was the bright red of this neo-Gothic limestone-and-brick building
designed by John J. Deery. As I learned a bit about the church's history, that red has come to represent for me the color of Christ, there to represent all, from whatever walk of life, very much including the marginalized, in this spiritual home.
Originally, St. Veronica’s was one of five churches
carved from the original parish of St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village. When it was
completed in 1903, it served a poor waterfront neighborhood, primarily Irish
and Irish-American. Tom Miller, in a fascinating post on the blog “Daytonian in Manhattan,” recounts how the pride of its impoverished parishioners in
finally seeing it built 13 years after its cornerstone was dedicated, at a time
when most churches were constructed from a year to 18 months. Heavyweight champion
Gene Tunney grew up in the parish, graduating from its school in 1911.
At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, St.
Veronica’s rectory was remodeled to provide housing for victims of the disease.
Members of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity established a hospice in
these quarters, caring for 15 victims at a time. In 1993, a memorial was dedicated in the
church, commemorating AIDS victims in the Village.
A decade ago, the Archdiocese of New York retitled
St. Veronica’s the Mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You can see, from the
notice of services offered in Spanish and a mural behind glass outside, that
the church serves a new community—Hispanics—but still fulfills its original
function as an immigrant haven.
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