Catholic churches have long served as East Cambridge’s cornerstones

By Beth Folsom, 2025

For many who settled in East Cambridge, the Catholic Church was an important and enduring institution. Catholicism was largely a faith practiced by newcomers to the neighborhood in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but despite having a religion in common, members of the area’s various ethnic communities preferred to worship with others of the same background – and in their native language – leading to several different local Catholic parishes. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish served mostly those of Irish descent, while St. Francis of Assisi Church served the Italian community, St. Hedwig’s Parish was mostly Polish, and St. Anthony’s Church was Portuguese.

In a time before Social Security and other government safety nets, individuals depended on their families and their religious communities for support in times of hardship. Churches provided crucial places for residents to gain spiritual community as well as ethnic pride, practical support and educational instruction in the churches’ accompanying schools. These religious communities helped immigrants and their descendants acclimate to their new nation while retaining connections to their ethnic heritage and serving as a pillar of neighborhood life.

By the 1830s, East Cambridge Catholics had established a Sunday school where neighborhood children could get religious instruction, but the lack of a church home meant that worshippers had to travel to Boston or Charlestown to attend services. In 1842 the first Catholic church in the city was established when St. John’s opened on Fourth Street, serving all of Cambridge and Somerville and lasting almost a century until it was demolished in 1934.

Built in the mid-1870s at Sixth and Otis streets, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church took over many of the worship activities of St. John’s Church. The only East Cambridge parish to have remained in its original building, Sacred Heart was also the largest and most expensive of the neighborhood’s churches, costing $200,000 at the time (equivalent to more than $5 million today). The large size and elaborate nature of Sacred Heart reflects the rising tide for Irish immigrants and their descendants in the area; many residents had arrived during the height of the potato famine in the 1840s and ’50s, but several decades later they had begun to establish themselves as a major force in East Cambridge and beyond. The ability to finance and support such a large parish meant that the Irish had begun to make it in Cambridge, and the church population remained mostly Irish until the turn of the 20th century. Beginning in the early 1900s, Sacred Heart also served as a home for Catholics from other immigrant groups, including Poles, Italians and Portuguese. Although these ethnicities would go on to create their own churches, some parishioners chose to stay at Sacred Heart, making it arguably the most ethnically diverse of the neighborhood’s congregations.

In 1902, Portuguese Catholics in East Cambridge celebrated the dedication of St. Anthony’s Church at Portland and Hardwick streets. The Portuguese community had been growing over the past several decades, with many immigrants arriving from the Azores islands, and by the beginning of the 20th century there were enough Portuguese families in the neighborhood to justify the building of a parish. By the 1970s, the congregation was regularly overflowing its pews, and this, combined with structural concerns about the building’s safety, led to the 1978 opening of a larger St. Anthony’s at Fourth Street and Portland Avenue (renamed Cardinal Medeiros Avenue for the man who oversaw the laying of the new building’s cornerstone).

In the early 20th century, the growth of the region’s Polish population led to the establishment of a number of Polish Catholic churches in the area, including St. Hedwig’s in 1907. The parish bought a church building on Otis Street that had been home to the Second Universalist congregation and soon opened two schools, on Otis Street and Charles Street. A hurricane in 1938 damaged the wooden church severely, leading it to be torn down and replaced by a brick structure that marks the only church building in East Cambridge built in the 20th century.

St. Francis of Assisi Church was established in 1917 by several prominent Italian families in East Cambridge as a home for the growing Italian population in the neighborhood. Buying a building at Fourth and Cambridge streets that had been home to a Baptist church, the parish went on to open a school nearby in 1926, as well as a convent for the nuns who taught there. The school was in operation until 1969, when it closed due to low enrollment and the building was bought by the city and used as the Gore Street School.

Over the past century, East Cambridge’s ethnic makeup has continued to change as groups of immigrants arrived from different parts of the world and members of older groups have migrated out of the neighborhood. But for many residents, the area’s Catholic churches continue to frame their conception of the neighborhood, its culture and its vibrant social and educational life. Whether providing religious services in one’s native language, offering opportunities for mutual support and fellowship, or serving the community’s young people through formal and religious education, East Cambridge’s Catholic parishes were a driving force in creating the neighborhood we know today.

This article first appeared in Cambridge Day.