By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I went to church recently with the Desi Arnaz and Al Capone families. Well, sort of.
During a recent visit to Miami, my wife Vicki and I attended Sunday morning Mass at the beautiful Gesù (“Holy Name of Jesus”) Church. The Gesù—the oldest Catholic church and parish in the area—started in 1896 near the South Florida spot where Jesuit missionaries first arrived over three centuries earlier.
My dear departed Irish-Catholic mother always told me that if I make a wish when I go into a new church for the first time, then that wish will come true. This is not a standard belief or practice sanctioned by the pope or anything like that, but it is fun, so I still do it.
Mother never fully explained to me the rules of this go-to-a-new-church-and-make-a-wish practice. I assume, however, that if I tell you what I wished for, it will not come true. So although I cannot wish and tell, I can reveal some interesting things that did come true at the Miami church even though I did not wish for them.
Although I did not expressly wish to follow in the ecclesiastical footsteps of dead Catholic celebrities, that’s exactly what happened. A Florida Catholic newspaper has reported that actor/singer Desi Arnaz attended the parish and its school when he moved to Miami from Cuba in 1933.
So did the Capone family. I am not certain about gangster/patriarch Alphonse “Al” Capone, but my research confirms that his Irish wife Mae Coughlin Capone and their son Albert Francis “Sonny” Capone attended Mass at the Gesù several times a week. Apparently, Sonny even was friends with Desi.
Mae Capone often told her son, “Don’t do as your father did.” Sonny listened, and stayed out of the notorious “family business.” He attended my alma mater the University of Notre Dame for a time, and operated several legitimate businesses before he died in 2004.
Some other information that I did not wish for when I first visited the Gesù church in Miami nonetheless was a surprise. Miami is similar in at least one way to my hometown in Latter-day Saint Northern Utah…and it’s not the great beaches.
Miami now has the second largest population of Hispanic Catholics in the United States (behind only Los Angeles). My hometown of Ogden does not have many Catholics at all. Yet, the two Catholic communities in Ogden and Miami developed at almost the exact same pace and time.
As I mentioned, the Gesù parish (oldest in Miami) started in 1896. My hometown parish—St. Joseph’s Church in Ogden—started just a few years earlier than Gesù, and dedicated its beautiful stone church in 1902. How did this unexpected cross-country religious symmetry happen?
Catholics first arrived in Utah in 1776, when Spanish Franciscan priests Silvestre Velez de Escalante and Atanasio Dominguez were searching for an overland route to Monterrey, California. Yet, Catholic Spanish explorers settled Florida much earlier, in the 1500s. In fact, the state was named for Spain’s Easter celebration—Pascua Florida (Festival of Flowers).
Still, it took several hundred more years for Catholicism to take root in Miami, which many then considered to be Florida’s untamed frontier.
Perhaps searching for the legendary fountain of youth, Ponce de Leon was the first European to visit the Miami area. In 1513, he and his crew explored the Tequesta native village at the mouth of the Miami river. The Tequesta people evacuated into the woods, however, and did not interact with the Spaniards then.
A few years later, Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Avila established the Catholic heart of Florida in St. Augustine, some 300 miles north of Miami. The city’s Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche—originally built in 1609—is one of the oldest Catholic worship sites in the Americas. St. Augustine’s Cathedral dates back to 1787.
Jesuit missionaries based in St. Augustine traveled south with Menendez de Avila in 1567 and established a mission near the Tequesta village that Ponce de Leon had visited at the mouth of the Miami River. The mosquito-plagued mission did not last long, however, nor did other missions started in 1568 and 1743.
It was not until 1872 that a priest from St. Augustine celebrated the first recorded Catholic Mass in the Miami area. (Ironically, during the very same year, a Catholic priest said the first known Mass in Ogden in Ogden, Utah.).
Soon after that Mass, Miami pioneer William J. Wagner constructed a small wooden church on his homestead, hoping to encourage additional visits by Catholic priests. Wagner—a devout German Catholic—had settled near the Miami River with his Creole wife after fighting in the Mexican-American War of 1846.
His chapel, called the “Little Church in the Pine Woods,” was Miami’s first house of worship since the time of the failed Spanish Jesuit missions. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed that old log chapel in 1892.
As a result—and due to rapid development of the South Florida frontier in the late 1800s—the Catholic bishop from St. Augustine started the Gesù parish and staffed it with Jesuit priests. Wagner and his family joined the new parish, which officially came into being even before Miami was incorporated as a city in 1896.
Local wealthy Presbyterian Henry Flagler, a Standard Oil business partner of John D. Rockefeller and one of the developers of Florida’s railroads and tourism infrastructure, donated land for a new Catholic church, close to the sites of the original Miami missions and Wagner’s chapel.
A wooden church was built on this land in 1896, and replaced with a more permanent structure in 1922. This is the beautiful salmon-colored Mediterranean Revival style church that we visited in March of 2023 in the heart of Miami’s central business district.
One other thing I did not wish for when I first visited the Gesù is to be so thoroughly impressed by its building and people. The lovely church, recently restored for its centennial, is listed on National Register of Historic Places.
It has a domed ceiling, Arabesque towers, and seats some 800 parishioners. The church features gorgeous crystal leaded stained glass windows from Germany depicting the life of Christ. Its altars are made from imported Italian Carrera marble.
The people of the Gesù are beautiful too. They welcomed us and other visitors warmly.
Over the years, they’ve also received the poor, the hungry, and the homeless with open arms, including exiles from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and many other South and Central American countries. The Gesù Church also greeted weary American soldiers as they returned to Miami from conflicts abroad, including in the Spanish-American War and both world wars.
Next time you walk into a new church for the first time, take my mother’s advice and make a wish. The wish may or may not come true, but keep in mind that often it is the things you do not wish for that are most memorable.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
