Did George Washington die a Catholic?

Traditional portrait of Washington
praying at Valley Forge.

With the celebration of Presidents' Day, and George Washington's birthday just a few days away (February 22), I often recall a passage from a book I had read to my children several years ago entitled: Saint Katharine Drexel: Friend of the Oppressed. The author of this historical novel, Elizabeth Tarry, includes a scene in which the child Kate Drexel dreams about far away lands and her heroes, Saint Francis and George Washington:

More than once, she went to sleep whispering: "Let perpetual light shine upon George Washington. May his soul rest in peace." It was a practice she was to continue for the rest of her life. 

While I'm not sure if this anecdote falls into the historical or the fiction part of Tarry's work, I was intrigued to discover that more connections exist between Washington and Catholicism than I realized, including a story that he experienced a death-bed conversion to the Catholic faith.

Here are some points in favor of Washington's supposed affinity toward Catholicism, as recorded in the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union Journal of March 15, 1884:

1. He merited it by his virtues.
2. He had a picture of the Blessed Virgin.
3. He was acquainted with Catholics, had visited Catholic churches, and contributed to their erection.
4. Juba, his servant, declared that Washington, "befo' he eat, do dis way (making the sign of the cross). I dunno what it means but he always do it."



Painting of the Blessed Virgin at Mount Vernon.

5. Rev Francis Neale was called from Piscataway across the Potomac and stayed with General Washington four hours before he died. 

This last claim is especially intriguing. More detail of this story may be drawn from The American Catholic Historical Researches, Volumes 16-17, 1900, in an article examining Washington's supposed conversion to Catholicism, written 101 years after his death:

It has often been the subject of regretful remark among the good people who appreciated the pure and exalted character of Washington that he seemed to make no mention of religion in his last moments and make no preparation for the step into the awful eternity beyond this life. In this connection the writer recently came across a curious legend current among the colored people living for the past few generations along the Maryland and Virginia shores of the Potomac adjoining Mount Vernon...that George Washington on his deathbed was baptized a Catholic.

"Massa George," they say, "was a good man but he done gone back on when he died," and the story they tell is as follows:

The night before Washington died, during a fierce storm, his colored body servant came riding down to the bank of the Potomac and after being ferried across said he had come in search of a Catholic priest. After some delay, one of the old Jesuit Fathers from the mission on the Maryland side was found, taken over the river to Mount Vernon, where he went at once to Mr. Washington's room and remained there with him three hours. When he left he seemed much gratified and said to those about him that there need be no more apprehension for Mr. Washington as the future of his soul was secure. He was then taken back to the Maryland shore and old darkeys tell with unvarying detail that their fathers believed Washington died a Catholic....

In addition the Jesuit record says that on the day after the visit to Mount Vernon the old Jesuit went to the Superior of the mission and relating the fact of his journey, handed the Superior a sealed packet saying I am not permitted to detail what transpired between Mr. Washington and myself in his room at Mount Vernon but I have written it out carefully here and after we both have passed away and occasion requires this can be opened and its contents made public. The Superior took the paper and placed it among the records of the mission where it remained until shortly after the death of the old Jesuit when it was boxed up still unopened with a lot of other papers, and sent to headquarters of the Order in Rome where it is still supposed to be awaiting the fortunate chance that will disclose it to the hand of some appreciative investigator who may throw some light on this very curious historical question.

The story was apparently repeated in a somewhat altered form by Rev. John Scully, SJ in a homily he gave on Sunday, May 13, 1900 at Old Saint Joseph's Church in Philadelphia. The information provided by Fr. Scully is as follows:

Miss Oliva Floyd, whose mother was a Semmes, was a Confederate spy during the War of the Rebellion. She is now a cripple of perhaps seventy years. She remembers often hearing her mother who lived to be eighty six years old, and who died about thirty years ago, speak of the large boat rowed by six or eight men which came from Mt. Vernon to St. Thomas Manor the night before George Washington died. They bore a message to Father Leonard Neale then Superior of the residence at St. Thomas from Washington between whom and the priest there had long existed an intimate friendship. 

The rowers found Father Neale walking up and down the beach reciting the divine office. He immediately went up to the rectory whence he returned in a few minutes probably having provided himself with the priestly stole, the ritual, and some blessed water. He accompanied the boatmen and was detained at Mt. Vernon the greater part of the next day. It was said by all in the neighborhood that General Washington had sent for his old friend, Father Neale, to receive conditional baptism make his confession and be received into the Catholic Church. 

Miss Floyd's mother certainly had means of knowing the truth if this were so as Dr. Crown, (?) Washington's physician, was an intimate friend of the Floyds and the Semmes and had a room which was always kept ready for him in the Floyd mansion, which is only fourteen or fifteen miles from Mt. Vernon, where he slept on his return from and on his way to Mount Vernon.

It should be noted, however, that this information was deemed far from conclusive. Later in the same article, the author, Martin I. J. Griffin, relays his doubts about the authenticity of these stories:

"The Researches thinks the alleged visit of Father Neale improbable. Nothing in Washington's life gives a basis for a belief in its probability....I do not believe he became a Catholic."

Furthermore, as Marian T. Horvat, PhD points out in her post, "Did George Washington Convert to Catholicism?" the first president was a devoted Free Mason and often appeared in Masonic regalia during his life and tenure in office.

While these doubts alone are not sufficient to dispel the conversion story completely, there isn't enough information available to prove the story either. That said, we should probably follow Mother Drexel's lead and pray for the salvation of President Washington's soul. As Archbishop Carroll said in a circular letter to his clergy on the occasion of Washington's death:

"Roman Catholics, in common with our fellow-citizens of the United States, have to deplore the irreparable loss our country has sustained by the death of that great man who contributed so essentially to the establishment and preservation of its peace and prosperity. We are, therefore, called upon by every consideration of respect to his memory and gratitude for his services to bear a public testimony of our high sense of his worth when living and our sincere sorrow for being deprived of that protection which the United States derived from his wisdom, his experience, his reputation, and the authority of his name....[Those wishing to eulogize the President] are advised not to form their discourses on the model of a funeral sermon, deduced from a text of Scripture, but rather to compose an oration, such as might be delivered in an Academy....If these discourses shall be delivered in churches, where the Holy Sacrament is usually kept, it will be proper to remove it previously with due honor, to some decent place." [Archbishop Carroll's circular letter to his clergy, dated Dec. 29, 1799]

In other words, as father of our country, Washington deserved the type of tribute offered by Catholics to virtuous non-Catholics upon their demise. That remains the case today.

Curiously, several Popes would find occasion to pay tribute to Washington. In 1852, during the construction of the Washington monument, Pope Pius IX sent a stone from the Temple of Concord in Rome to be incorporated into the monument. Unfortunately, this so-called "Pope's Stone" would be stolen by anti-Catholic Know-Nothings and dumped into the Potomac, though stories claim that it was dredged up some 40 years later.

In his encyclical to the Catholic bishops of America of 1895 entitled Longinqua, Pope Leo XIII praised Washington as follows:

Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Pacelli at Mount Vernon in 1936.

On October 22, 1936, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli visited Mount Vernon as part of a tour of the eastern United States. While there, he placed wreaths at the graves of George and Martha Washington. Later, after he became Pope Pius XII, he said the following in his encyclical, Sertum Laetitiae, written in 1939:

When Pope Pius VI gave you your first Bishop in the person of the American John Carroll and set him over the See of Baltimore, small and of slight importance was the Catholic population of your land. At that time, too, the condition of the United States was so perilous that its structure and its very political unity were threatened by grave crisis. Because of the long and exhausting war the public treasury was burdened with debt, industry languished and the citizenry wearied by misfortunes was split into contending parties. This ruinous and critical state of affairs was put aright by the celebrated George Washington, famed for his courage and keen intelligence. He was a close friend of the Bishop of Baltimore. Thus the Father of His Country and the pioneer pastor of the Church in that land so dear to Us, bound together by the ties of friendship and clasping, so to speak, each the other's hand, form a picture for their descendants, a lesson to all future generations, and a proof that reverence for the Faith of Christ is a holy and established principle of the American people, seeing that it is the foundation of morality and decency, consequently the source of prosperity and progress.

Again, of themselves, these tributes prove nothing regarding the religious status (or lack thereof) of President Washington at the time of his death. But it is amusing to consider the possibility that the Vatican knows a secret about him that the rest of the world does not.