PRECIOUS MEMORIES
Precious Blood Parish celebrates 150 years with a look to the past
PWOONSOCKET recious Blood Roman Catholic Church at 94 Carrington Ave. is celebrating its 150th Anniversary this year, and that means a look back on a lot of history from its role as the city’s first French-Canadian Catholic parish. Precious Blood parish, or L’Eglise du Precieux Sang in French, began construction of its historic Gothic brick-and-granite church in the city’s Hamlet District in 1873 and continues to offer services to the community today in partnership with the St. Agatha Catholic parish in Bernon.
“I think it’s wonderful, really, to recount God’s blessings over such a long time,” the Rev. Michael A. Kelley, pastor for both partnered parishes, said of Precious Blood’s anniversary.
“1873 to 2023, that was a time with so many new beginnings after the Civil War,” Rev. Kelley added.
“Our Diocese, the Diocese of Providence celebrated its 150th Anniversary last year, and it started around the same time, the whole Diocese,” Kelley noted.
Over the past 10 years he has been pastor for Precious Blood, Rev. Kelley said he has “gotten to know the goodness of the people, and of course in our parish there, so many people of Franco-American heritage.”
“I think I’m the first pastor who is not of Franco-American heritage but my mother was born in Canada, and her first name was Marguerite, so I claim a little,” Rev. Kelley related.
The history at Precious Blood actually began with the help of another city ethnic group, Irish Americans, at the city’s first Roman Catholic parish, St. Charles Borromeo at 8 Daniels St. in the North End.
The French-Canadian founders of Precious Blood started out holding Masses in the basement of St. Charles before renting a hall owned by the Harris Woolen Company as the congregation grew.
In those days, the Diocese of Hartford in Connecticut assigned French-speaking priests to Woonsocket while a location
for a new church was sought.
“That is the way that churches begin,” Rev. Kelly noted.
“They get incorporated and then you build a building after that as the church grows and more people come and contribute and have their spiritual life nourished there,” Rev. Kelley explained.
Even with the arrival of more and more French Canadians from the Province of Quebec in the Blackstone Valley in the 1870s and the resulting demand for French-speaking priests, getting Precious Blood Church built as a masterful venue for religious faith proved to be a long and difficult road for its founders.
As Rev. Kelley, and Trudy Lamoureux, 88, a parish board member, related – it took the lifelong commitment of a young French-Canadian priest coming to the Blackstone Valley in poor health to turn things around.
Father Charles Dauray, a future Monsignor, became the third pastor of the Precious Blood congregation, but is acknowledged as the founding force for Precious Blood and its related services to Woonsocket’s growing French-Canadian population.
“He was pastor for 56 years and I think that is something that won’t be duplicated by any Catholic pastor today, we get moved around more than that,” Rev. Kelley said of Msgr. Dauray.
Msgr. Dauray’s many accomplishments – his completion of Precious Blood and his founding of institutions such as the Mount St. Francis Orphanage and the original L’Hospice St. Antoine on Hamlet Avenue, bringing the Religieuses de Jesus-Marie sisters from Quebec to teach in parish schools and found their St. Clare High School for girls off Park Avenue, and even helping build Mount St. Charles Academy overlooking the city from the top of Logee Street – all seem even more remarkable today.
“It was almost like for every age group, he had something for them,” Rev. Kelley explained.
“He built his last great project, Mount St. Charles Academy, which is still thriving today,” Rev. Kelley said of the school Msgr. Dauray founded with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart he also brought from Canada to teach in parish schools.
Lamoureux’s family was among those benefiting from the French-Canadian parish Msgr. Dauray established.
Her mother Arthurette Payeur and her father, Romeo Lambert, both emigrated from their respective Quebec communities, St. Hyacinthe, and Drumondville, to start new lives in Woonsocket in the 1920s and ‘30s.
“They settled in Woonsocket and met here,” Lamoureux, also a historian for Precious Blood, recalled.
Lamoureux, one of six surviving siblings in her family, had all her sacraments at Precious Blood beginning with her Baptism in 1934 and followed by First Communion in 1940, and was also married there.
Dauray had only been a priest for three years in Canada when he was advised to move to a warmer climate due to a life-threatening lung condition he suffered from, Lamoureux noted.
“He had a brother who had already come here, so he came to his brother Hypollite’s house in Pawtucket,” Lamoureux said.
While he was living in Pawtucket and recovering, Lamoureux said Msgr. Dauray contacted the Diocese in Hartford to offer his services.
“They said address yourself to the new bishop, he will be there next week, and that was Bishop Thomas Hendricken,” Lamoureux said.
As he founded the new Diocese of Providence, Bishop Hendricken asked Father Dauray to take on ministering to French-Canadian residents of Central Falls and Pawtucket. The Diocese has records of the young priest holding allFrench Masses in 1874 in Armory Hall on Exchange Street in Pawtucket.
Next, Father Dauray headed to Central Falls where he helped build the Notre Dame du Sacre Coeur Catholic Church on Fales Street in 1875, the first French-Canadian parish in Rhode Island.
With that project completed, Bishop Hendricken asked Father Dauray to take over the ongoing efforts to build Precious Blood which had been started by the Rev. Antoine Bernard of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, after he was assigned to the growing flock of French-Canadians at St. Charles.
The Rev. Bernard incorporated the parish and acquired the Precious Blood site at Carrington, Park Avenue and Hamlet Avenue before he moved on to St. James Catholic parish in Manville.
The second pastor at Precious Blood, the Rev. James Berkins, a Belgian, began the actual construction of the future church but did not get the full support of his congregation, according to Lamoureux.
“At that time, Central Falls was founded and the Bishop said ‘now that the major job is done, I need you to go help in Woonsocket,” Lamoureux said of Msgr. Dauray’s selection to replace Rev. Berkins.
Msgr. Dauray knew how to take on big challenges and would face just that in Woonsocket, according to Lamoureux.
“He was good at it, he had a way to charm the people, people related to him, he was a hardworking priest,” Lamoureux said.
Precious Blood’s distinctive 170-foot-high tower went up and Dauray was moving forward toward completion while rebuilding the parishioners’ enthusiasm for the project, Lamoureux noted.
“Just as they were doing that very well, a big gale happened and the church fell,” Lamoureux said.
The windows of the church had not yet been installed when the storm arrived in February of 1876, and the winds lifted up the roof, collapsing it onto the unfinished building, according to Lamoureux.
Rev. Dauray said the church might have fallen but the parish members were still standing, Lamoureux related.
“He said let’s rebuild, and so the people made sacrifices and gave more money to the church,” Lamoureux said.
As Msgr. Dauray continued to serve his French-Canadian flock, Precious Blood would see new French-speaking parishes established in Woonsocket, including Holy Family Church, St. Ann, Our Lady of Victories, St. Louis and St. Joseph.
The growth of French-Canadian parishes also resulted in a notable conflict with the Diocese of Providence in the 1920s known as the Sentinellists movement, a name drawn from the local French-Canadian newspaper “La Sentinelle.”
The Sentinellists took Bishop Hickey to court over a plan to use their parish funds for other Diocese schools but in the end lost as the Bishop gained the excommunication of 62 of Sentinellists from Pope Pius X1 until they submitted to his wishes.
Msgr. Dauray was among the local clergy urging compliance with the Bishop and even sought common ground by supporting a dual language approach for the then French-speaking parish schools.
“He was on the side of the Bishop and he stuck it out,” Lamoureux said.
“He said ‘my first vow was of obedience,’” Lamoureux added.
Msgr. Dauray would continue his service to his parish with prayer until his death from pneumonia at the age of 93 in 1931. He was laid to rest in a corner of his beloved church not far from his statue outside.
Today, Rev. Kelley said the Precious Blood and St. Agatha parishes continued to do Msgr. Dauray’s work even as churches cope with declining membership and look for younger members to keep them going.
“We’re doing things together, a lot of things we do together,” Lamoureux said.
“We have a food pantry that is centered at St. Agatha’s, but people from Precious Blood donate some of the canned goods for it and some of the parishioners at Precious Blood volunteer at it,” Rev. Kelley said.
“We also have the Legion of Mary group that has membership from both parishes. We have a retreat coming up, The Light of the World Retreat, and both parishes’ members are invited, so we do a lot together,” Rev. Kelley said.
“We have our struggles, we have to be honest, we don’t have the numbers that we once had and we are hoping for more membership,” Rev. Kelley noted.
“I guess it’s more about the people than about the buildings. It’s the relationships that really count and our relationship with God,” the pastor said.
How would Msgr. Dauray view that challenge today?
“He would probably bring down another religious group to evangelize young people,” Rev. Kelley said.
“He did that with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of Jesus and Mary, but if there were another group he would probably bring them down too. He was quite the builder,” Rev. Kelley said.